
























GIFT OF HEIRS OF 
Dr. LOUIS R. KLEMM 


fY. 

► 

Children. 


In the i commit and 

recite.” The pupil commences with actual specimens of plants 
which every one is able to collect, and learns to look with his 
own eyes and think with his own mind. Children can begin to 
study plants successfully by this method as soon as tl ey can 
write, and any teacher, without previous knowledge of the sub¬ 
ject, can conduct them through the exercises without difficulty. 

Miss Youmans claims that Botany may be made to do for the 
observing faculties what mathematics does for the reasoning 
faculty, and, in preparing a book by which this work may be 
commenced, she has met the profoundest need of popular edu¬ 
cation. 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 

549 & 55 1 Broadway, New York. 





LOCKYER’S ASTRONOMY 


ELEMENTS OF ASTRONOMY: 

Accompanied with numerous Illustrations, a Colored Repre¬ 
sentation of the Solar, Stellar, and Nebular Spectra, 
and Celestial Charts ol the Northern 
and the Southern Hemisphere. 

By J. Norman Lockyer. 

American edition , revised and specially adapted to the Schools 

of the United States. 

12 mo. 312 pages. Price, $1.50. 

The volume is as practical as possible. To aid the student 
in identifying the stars and constellations, the fine Celestial 
Charts of Arago, which answer all the purposes of a costly Atlas 
of the Heavens, are appended to the work—this being the only 
text-book, as far as the Publishers are aware, that possesses this 
great advantage. Directions are given for finding the most in¬ 
teresting objects in the heavens at certain hours on different 
evenings throughout the year. Every device is used to make 
the study interesting; and the Publishers feel assured that 
teachers who once try this book will be unwilling to exchange 
it for any other. 

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 

549 & 551 Broadway, New York. 



HISTORY PRIMERS. 


Edited by J. R. Green, M.A. 


GEOGRAPHY . 






























ijistonj rimers. Edited by J. R. Green. 


GEOGRAPHY 


BY 


GEORGE GROVE, F.R.G.S. 

1 % 


WITH MAPS AND DIAGRAMS . 

t > 

i 1 • 


NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

549 AND 551 BROADWAY. 

1878 . 



Gr' 2> 

£0 


B. Kle m m 

Bequest 
Feb. 1920 



CONTENTS. 


Maps and Map-making:—W hat is a map? 6; can you read 
it ? 9 ; latitude and longitude 13 ; projection 19 ; globular pro¬ 
jection 21 ; Mercator’s chart 23; reading a map 27; the 
Tropics 31 ; the Zones 32 ; mariner’s compass 33 ; Time 36 ; 
angle of ninety degrees 39. 

The Earth :—Figure of the earth 41 ; arrangement of land and 
water 44 ; structure of Old World 46 ; of New World 50 ; com¬ 
parison of the two 55 ; superiority of Europe 59 ; Australia 60 ; 
North America 61. 

The Ocean :—Its extent 62: the Atlantic 63: the Pacific 65: the 
Indian 66; the Arctic and Antarctic 67 ; winds 68 ; currents 69 ; 
Gulf Stream 71; the tides 73 ; bottom of ocean 74 ; its heat 78 ; 
its saltness 79. 

Features of the Earth :—Continents 80; islands 81 ; capes 
83 ; mountains 84 ; their names 91 ; volcanoes 93 ; valleys 95 ; 
plains 95; peninsulas 98 ; rivers 99 ; deltas 103 ; names of 
rivers 107; lakes 109: inland seas hi; waterpartings 112 ; 
watershed 114; basin 115; coast 116; gulf 117 ; strait 117 ; 
icebergs 119. 

Appendix :—Measures of length 124 ; knots in a degree of longi¬ 
tude in various latitudes 125 ; scales and symbols of Ordnance 
maps 126. 



I 







HISTORY PRIMERS. 


GEOGRAPHY. 


i. Geography is from two Greek words, yv, ge, the 
earth, and ypagrap/ie, description ; and that is what 
k is, a description of the earth ; not of what is below 
•the surface, for that is geology, but of all that is to 
be seen on the face of it—the land, the sea, the 
mountains, and valleys, and rivers, and lakes, and 
all the rest that meets the eye. Nor of these only in 
themselves, but an account of them as they are con¬ 
cerned with the inhabitants of the world. It is some¬ 
times said that there are three kinds of geography— 
mathematical, physical, and political—of which the 
first has to do with the shape and size of the world, and 
the making of maps ; the second with the form of the 
ground and its influence on man ; the third with the 
divisions and history of nations and peoples. But all 
three are embraced in the word Geography, and 
therefore a Primer of Geography must have to 
do with them all. Nor do I see how they can well 
be separated; for neither the form of the globe, 
nor the arrangement of the land and water, nor the 
divisions which nations have made between themselves, 
are of any moment except as they concern us; and 
the three are so connected and mixed up together that 



6 


GEOGRAPHY. 


no right view can be taken of one without the others 
in some way interposing. 

2 . This is a little book, and therefore all our de¬ 
scriptions must be short. Long accounts of the 
countries with full particulars about them must be 
left for another time. I shall not give you any par¬ 
ticulars of the history of Geography. What the ancients 
knew of it you will find in the Primer of Ancient Geo¬ 
graphy. Nor shall we do more than glance at the pro¬ 
cesses by which the earth became what it is, how the 
mountains were lifted up and the valleys scooped out; 
for that is done to perfection in the Primer of Physical 
Geography. And we shall touch as little as possible 
on Astronomy, because you will find that in the 
Primer and Elementary Lessons on that science. But 
I shall try to give you a general knowledge of what 
the world is and what its different parts are like, 
and so prepare you for a longer and fuller account 
elsewhere. I shall shew you :— 

I. What Maps are, why they are wanted, and how 
they are made. 

II. What are the general structure and arrangement 
of the Earth and Ocean. 

III. Some particulars of the features ol Land and 
Water. 

3 . And first about 

MAPS AND MAP-MAKING. 

When you sit down to a game of chess or draughts, 
you have the board under your eyes, and can see and 
touch every part of it. But suppose the board were 
ten miles square, and you had still to play the game, 
what would you do ? You would have a small repre¬ 
sentation or map of it made, the size of a sheet of 



WHAT IS A MAP? 


7 


paper, which you could keep before you and mark 
all the moves upon. 

4 . Suppose again you had been the commanding 
officer at some great battle, and wished to explain the 
movements of the troops to a friend, to shew how this 
farmhouse was taken, that clump of trees occupied, 
and that road defended, in short how the battle went 
from beginning to end; what would you do? You 
would draw it all out small on a piece of paper, in the 
same proportions, and with the places and things in 
their positions with regard to each other, just as it 
would look if you were hanging over it in a balloon ; in 
other words, you would make a map of it, and then 
you could easily shew your friend where the regiments 
stood, and how the batteries were placed, and in 
short could go through all the successive operations 
of the day, and make them plain to him, plainer than 
they were in the battle itself, where only one part could 
be seen at a time. 

5 . Suppose once more that you had to walk from 
London to Brighton, and did not know the way, and 
had no one to shew it you. You would be utterly 
puzzled. You would not know whether you were 
walking towards Brighton or Reading or Chatham. 
You could not see the town in the distance, and 
every hedge or house or ridge would shut out the 
view before you, and quite bewilder you. But if 
I brought you a map with everything marked upon 
it, you could then draw a straight line to Brighton, 
you could see where the line cut the places on the 
map, and so by degrees find your way along, field 
by field, and village by village, keeping this place 
to the right and that to the left, till you arrived at 
your journey’s end. 





8 


GEOGRAPHY. 


6. Now here are three cases in which without a 
map you could not get on at all. No doubt they are 
never likely to happen. But they are good examples 
of what does happen every day. If all men were 
fixed for life in the places they were born in, and 
never travelled, and had no concern with people 
of other places and countries, maps would be of 
little use. But we do travel, we have business all 
over the world, friends in India, friends in America; 
ships sail about the ocean where for days and weeks 
they see no land, and have no apparent means of 
finding their way; armies go into an enemy’s country, 
where it is important not only to find their way but to 
know the distance exactly, to an hour’s march or less; 
and for all these things maps are indispensable, and so 
the science of Geography has grown up, and the method 
of making maps, and of understanding them 
when made—of representing on paper the surface of 
the earth, with what may be called its features, all the 
indentations of the coast, the bends of the rivers, the 
extent of the forests, the lie of the mountains, as well 
as all the cities, villages, roads, railways, canals, and so 
on, in the same positions and proportions as they are 
in reality, only far smaller, just as they would appear 
if you could look at the world from a distance. 

7. Not a picture, that is a different thing—different 
in nature and different in object. A map is not made 
to please, so much as to instruct. It aims to show 
the shapes and positions of the features of the earth, 
not as they rise before the eye in all the beauties of the 
sun and air, and in their vertical, upright forms, but as 
they are stretched out horizontally at one’s feet. Sup¬ 
pose you saw an ant running about the table-cloth at 
dessert among the dishes and decanters. It sees the 



CAN YOU READ A MAP? 


9 


things on each side of it, but it can have no know¬ 
ledge of their shapes, and the way they are arranged ; 
it is too small for the purpose. If it could raise 
itself to the same height above the table that your 
eye is, and have the same power of sight, it would 
see the whole at a glance, and be able to make its 
journeys without loss of time or trouble. Now the 
table-cloth is the country, the ant is you, and the 
view is a map. 

8 . But are you sure that when you have got the map 
you will be able to read it ? There was a time when 
you could not read a printed book, before you knew 
the letters, and how to put them into words, and words 
into sentences. Oh but, you say, a map is a different 
thing. I can understand it at a glance. Can you ? Shew 
a savage, even an intelligent savage, a photograph or 
portrait, and you would think it impossible that he 
should not know that it represents a man or a woman. 
But the savage will not have the least idea what it 
means ; he will not even know whether it is upside 
down or not; he will see no more in it than he 
would on a blank bit of paper ; the picture which to 
you is so plain to him says nothing, and I am very 
much mistaken if the map says very much more to you. 
At any rate it will not say all that it has to say. boi 
instance, what are the lines drawn up and down across 
it, and the figures at the ends of those lines. Can you 
point out to me the watershed or basins of the rivers ? 
Do you even know the meaning of the words? Can 
you distinguish roads from rivers, or either of them 
from canals ? or could you trace with your finger a 
line over the country which should keep the same level 
everywhere ? Could you shew me the shortest road 
across the ocean between two places, say between 



IO 


GEOGRAPHY. 


Cape Horn and Canton ? Probably not; but until you 
can do this, and a great deal more, you can only read 
the map imperfectly. 

9. It is with the ground-plan of the earth’s surface 
that geography has to do, and to profit by it we must 
know how maps are made. Now we know from our 
Primer of Astronomy that the earth is a very large 
ball about 8,000 miles through, the outside of which 
is formed of the land and water that make up 
the various countries. They form the skin of the 
earth as the peel forms the skin of an orange; and 
just as you can take an orange, and mark a line right 
round it, and come back to the same point again, so 
you may set out from London, or any other place, 
and go always in one straight direction, and at last, 
after many months, come round to London again, 
which you could not do if the earth were anything 
else but a great ball. 

10. Now as the earth is a ball it seems plain that the 
map of the earth should be a ball too. And so it may 
be ; we have them, and we call them globes, and 
for getting a general idea of the world and the countries 
upon it nothing can be better than a globe. But there 
is one drawback, that if it were made sufficiently large 
to shew the details of the map, it would be quite un¬ 
manageable, too cumbrous for use, and also too expen¬ 
sive. The largest globes that we see in libraries and 
museums are yet so small that nothing can be given 
upon them but the general features of the countries— 
few details of rivers or roads or mountains or towns, or 
other important things ; with the palm of your hand 
you may cover the whole of England ; a great city is 
no bigger than a pin’s head, and your house and 
garden are invisible. An attempt was once made to 



II 


NORTH ,; SOUTH,\ EAST, AND WEST. 

make a really large globe, which was shewn in 
Leicester Square, London, under the name of Wyld’s 
Great Globe,—but though its advantages were great 
its disadvantages were greater, and it was soon given 

up. 

ii. Our maps then must be flat. But to get a flat 
representation of any large portion of a curved surface 
is simply impossible. Take a piece of paper and 
attempt to fit it to the surface of a ball or globe, and 
it cannot be done, there will be always a number of 
creases in the paper; and though the larger the globe 
and the smaller the piece of paper the smaller the 
creases will be, yet some will always remain at the 
edges to shew that the plane surface cannot answer 
exactly to the curved one. A flat map therefore 
can never be absolutely correct; it will at the 
best only come near the truth. 

1.2. To see how the difficulty is got over, we will 
begin by considering a spherical map, or what is 
generally called a terrestrial globe, since it is the 
foundation of all map-making. And before we go 
any farther we must fix on a few words, so that 
we may understand exactly what we mean, and have 
no confusion. In Geography we do not say Top and 
Bottom, Right and Left; but we call them north, 
south, east, and west. When you are in front of 
a globe or map, the top is the north, the bottom is 
the south, the right hand is the east, the left hand 
is the west. Also, as the earth is a ball spinning 
round from West to East, as if on a pole or axle-tree 
run through it, it has been agreed to call the extreme 
north spot of the earth the North Pole, and the 
opposite one the South Pole. If we lived in 
Australia this would be exactly reversed. We should 
2 





12 


GEOGRAPHY. 


then look to the South Pole as we now look to the 
North; the left hand would be the East, and the 
right hand the West. Again, in this Primer when we 
say the Earth , we mean the actual world itself; but 
when we say the Globe , we mean the representation 
of it of which the following is a picture :— 



Fig. T. 


13. There is the globe then, or rather one side of it, 
one half, a Hemi-sphere ; and two questions at once 
occur to us—What are all those lines drawn up and 
down and across it ? and How were all the countries 
and places got into their proper places just as they are 
on the earth itself? Two better questions it would be 
impossible to ask, or two that depend more strictly on 
each other. The lines are there solely for the 
purpose of fixing the places, and the places 
could not be fixed without the lines. The lines 


















































MERIDIANS AND PARALLELS. 


13 


which run from top to bottom—North Pole to South 
Pole—are lines or meridians of longitude; you 
see that there are 36 of them, 18 in each hemi¬ 
sphere, and they divide the whole circumference 
of the globe into 36 equal parts, each of which 
again is subdivided into 10 degrees, or 360 degrees 
in all. The lines which run round the globe 
from west to east, at right angles to the meridians 
of longitude, are called parallels of latitude, and 
of these you see there are 17. The middle one, 
which goes round the world at its largest part, is called 
the Equator, and there are 8 to the north and 8 to 
the south of it, dividing the space between the 
Equator and each Pole into 9 parts; and these 
also are each of 10 degrees. They are numbered 
from 1 to 90 upwards and from 1 to 90 downwards, 
and those above the Equator are called parallels 
of north latitude, those below it, parallels of south 
latitude. 

14. The meridians of longitude are all the same 
size. Each one goes through both North Pole and 
South Pole, and therefore runs right round the 
globe ; and each is called a Great Circle because 
it is the largest circle that can be drawn on the 
globe. Thus there is no one meridian larger than the 
rest to form a natural starting-place, as the Equator 
does for the parallels, and therefore a special one 
has to be chosen to count from—ten, twenty, thirty, 
to the right, and ten, twenty, thirty, to the left, till they 
meet at 180. The English choose that which runs 
through Greenwich Observatory, and call those east of 
it in East longitude, those west of it in West longitude. 
The French take a line passing through Paris ; others 
have taken Ferro, one of the Canary islands. It is 




14 


GEOGRAPHY. 


quite immaterial which is chosen, as long as we know 
it; since all the lines are alike, and all that is wanted 
is one to start from. But in the case of the latitude 
all agree to take the Equator as the starting-point, as 
being the largest of all the parallels, and standing 
naturally in the middle between those north and those 
south of it. For if you think a little, and if you look 
at the picture, 



Fig. 2. 


you will see that the circles round the globe, which 
we call parallels of latitude, must inevitably get less 
in length as they are farther off from the Equator, 
until at last they come to nothing at the Poles. There 
is only one Great Circle among the whole 17 parallels, 
and that one is the Equator. 

15. Now the Equator is divided into 360 degrees 
(written 0 ), and the meridians into 360 degrees also; 









































KNOTS , DEGREES , MINUTES. 


15 


and each degree into 60 minutes (written '), and 
each minute into 60 seconds (written "), which 
have nothing to do with the minutes and seconds of 
an hour, though they are called by the same names 
and divided by sixties. And thus 32 0 19' 27" means 
32 degrees, 19 minutes, 27 seconds. Further, each 
minute, each sixtieth part of a degree of the equator 
or the meridians, is a mile —not a common English 
mile, but a geographical or nautical mile, or knot. 
Reckonings in navigation are usually made by geogra¬ 
phical miles, and to avoid confusion we will always 
call them knots. They are longer than our common 
English statute miles as 2,028 is longer than 1,760, or 
as 69 to 60 nearly ; and at the end of the book you 
will find a table of comparison between the two. 

16. Now we will go a step farther. Each meridian 
is divided into 360 degrees, and each degree into 
60 minutes, or 21,600 in all, and each of those minutes 
is a knot, for all the meridians are Great Circles of 
the same length ; and the Equator also is divided 
into 360 degrees and 21,600 minutes, and each minute 
is a knot there too, because the Equator is a Great 
Circle also. But remember it is the only Great Circle 
among all the parallels. From the nature of the case 
each parallel is smaller than the last, and therefore 
the value of the degrees and minutes into which they 
are divided—that is to say, the degrees and minutes 
of longitude which are counted along them—gets 
smaller too, till, at the Pole, it comes to nothing. At 
Greenwich (N. lat. 5 1° 28' 40"), the value of a degree of 
longitude is only about 37 knots instead of 60. You 
must please to think over this, as between the degrees 
and parallels and meridians it is a little puzzling. As 
long as you measure by degrees, minutes, and seconds, 




i6 


GEOGRAPHY. 


there is no difficulty. Two meridians that were io 
degrees apart at the Equator are io degrees apart at 
any spot between the Equator and the Pole, the pro¬ 
portion is always exactly the same. Some watches 
have a hole in the case with a set of figures round 
it, and though the hole is only half the size of the 
inside face, yet the time is always the same on 
both. When it is 20 minutes to 5 on the large set 
of figures it is 20 minutes to 5 on the small one, 
though so much smaller; and just so the distance 
between the meridians on the globe decreases in exact 
proportion, and degrees are always of the same 
relative value, which is a great convenience for 
measuring off. But when you begin to translate the 
degrees into knots you find that the minutes of longi¬ 
tude are continually growing smaller as they approach 
the Poles, or, in other words, that each degree of 
longitude contains fewer knots. At the end of the 
book you will find a table for this also. 

17. By the help of this apparatus of cross lines the 
position of any place can be fixed on the globe and 
described with the greatest accuracy. Thus Genoa is 
44 0 25' N. lat. ; that is, 44 degrees and 25-6oths of a 
degree, or 25 minutes, in North latitude, or north 
of the Equator; and it is also 8° 58' E. long., that is, 
8 degrees 58 minutes East longitude, or east of 
the meridian of Greenwich. San Francisco again 
is 37 ° 49 " North latitude, and 122 0 8' West longitude 
—west of Greenwich, and so on. 

18. And then the convenience of it. You hear of a 
wreck taking place and the people suffering dreadful 
misery on some small island, as the crew and 
passengers of the Strath??iore did on the Crozet islands 
in 1875. The papers are full of it, and of course you 



HOW THE MAP IS MADE. 


17 


want to see where it was. You might search the map 
of the world all over and the name would escape you. 
But if I tell you that it is in S. lat. 46° 16', and E. long. 
48° 27', you can drop upon it in a moment. 

19. But there is another service which these cross 
lines can perform. Put a man suddenly down at any 
spot on the earth, furnished with the proper instruments 
and able to use them, and he will be able to tell you 
the latitude and longitude of that spot. He will 
make certain observations of the sun, moon, and stars, 
and will look at his chronometer or clock, which keeps 
the same time as at Greenwich, and he will tell you 
how many degrees and parts of a degree he is north 
or south of the Equator, and how many degrees and 
parts of a degree he is east or west of the meridian of 
Greenwich; having got which knowledge the cross 
lines enable him to fix the spot on the map with accu¬ 
racy. In the same way, ships can find out where they 
are on the ocean when out of sight of land; they 
take observations which give them their position east 
or west of the meridian of Greenwich, and north or 
south of the Equator. The captain measures off these 
two dimensions on his map, and then he can see 
whether he is sailing in his right course or not, and 
can act accordingly. What these “ observations ” are, 
and how taken, you will find explained in the Primer 
of Astronomy, at pages 108-114. 

20. Thus what I said before about the globe (§13) 
is quite true. The lines are there for the purpose of 
fixing the places, and the places could not be fixed 
without the lines. 

21. We are now able to get a rough general idea of 
the way in which a globe or spherical map of the 
earth might be made, supposing you were going to 



i8 


GEOGRAPHY. 


make the first one that ever was. Having got your 
globe, and having marked the North and South Poles 
on it, and drawn the Equator midway between them, 
and the parallels of latitude and meridians of longi¬ 
tude, and numbered them, you would be in a position 
to begin to put down the information brought by navi¬ 
gators and travellers, as it arrived. For instance, some 
one who had been sailing to South America might 
report that he had seen four cities on the coast:— 


Pernambuco. 
Bahia . 

Rio Janeiro . 
Buenos Ayres 


S. Lat. 8° 3' 

„ 12° 42' 

„ 22° 53' 

„ 34 ° 36 ' 


W. Long. 34 0 54' 
38° 42' 
43° 12' 
58° 24' 


99 

99 

99 


These four places you could at once put down on 
your globe, and they would form a beginning for 
South America. The same sailor, or some one else, 
would give you the line of the coast between these 
places, with the latitudes and longitudes of the principal 
points; and those too you would put down. Next 
week another navigator might arrive from Australia, or 
a traveller, like Lieutenant Cameron, from the centre 
of Africa, bringing a few points from each ; and so by 
degrees your map would grow until the whole globe 
became covered. 

% 

2 2. And this is really how the globe has been made, 
only it has taken hundreds of years and thousands 
of people to do it. And it is not yet complete. Of 
the inside of Persia and of Australia much is yet to 
be known. Numbers of latitudes and longitudes of 
New Guinea were brought home by Captain Moresby 
in 1873. Tibet and the other great pastoral countries 
north of India are very little explored ; and you know 
how many travellers, from Landor to Livingstone, have 
died in the endeavour to get latitudes and longitudes 




PROJECTION. 


19 


in the heart of Africa, and how much has been added to 
the map by the Polar expeditions, from Cook, Ross, 
and Parr>% to Payer and Nares. And there would be 
much to correct from time to time. It is not 20 
years since the coast of Syria was found to be four 
miles out in all the maps, and the position of Jeru¬ 
salem was correctly fixed for the first time. 

23. So far for the globe. But we have seen that for 
ordinary use globes will not do, we must have flat 
maps ; and the next question is, how are these to be 
made from the globe ? That is to say, how are the 
cross lines to be put down ? For I cannot too often 
remind you that the cross lines are the absolute foun¬ 
dation of every map. Therefore, in making a flat map 
from the globe, the parallels of latitude and meri¬ 
dians of longitude are the first things to think of. 
If we can get them accurately drawn all the rest 
will follow; get the skeleton right and we can easily 
clothe it with flesh, form, and colour. Now the 
skeleton will never be quite accurate, for we have 
already seen that a sheet of paper can never be fitted 
to the surface of a sphere. Many methods have been 
tried of overcoming this, and though they are only 
a choice of evils, yet practically they answer well. 
For in all science an error is only an evil as long 
as its exact amount is not known. When it is 
known it can be allowed for and overcome. And if 
we know how far off our parallels and meridians in the 
flat map are from being like those on the globe, we 
shall be able to allow for the mistake. 

24. First therefore we have to transfer our meridians 
and parallels from the sphere to the flat paper. Now 
this transference is called projection —a pretty word : 
it is as if the sphere were hollow, made of thin glass, 




20 


GEOGRAPHY. 


and we were seated inside it looking through, and as 
it were projecting the lines upon it on to the paper 
beyond. And indeed, speaking roughly, that is the 
principle on which most projections are made—the 
globe is supposed to be made of glass and you are 
stationed inside it either at the centre, or on the 
side, or outside it altogether, close by, or at an 
immense distance off, and you are supposed to look 
through the glass and to see the meridians and 
parallels projected on to a paper beyond, or on a paper 
stretched between you and the globe. 

25. Now we have not time to explain all the 
various ways in which people have endeavoured to 
represent the surface of the globe on a flat paper : it 
would be very difficult to describe them so that they 
would be understood, and if understood, it might 
hardly be worth the trouble. We will therefore con¬ 
fine ourselves to the two most commonly employed. 

26. The world in hemispheres, which is found at 
the beginning of most atlases, is drawn on what is 
called the globular projection, which was the dis- 



* ig- 3- 




THE GLOBULAR PROJECTLON. 


21 


covery of Philippe de la Hire (1640-1718). In this 
you are supposed to be standing outside the globe, at 
a certain moderate * distance from it, and to be look¬ 
ing through at the inside of the opposite half; and 
the paper, or “plane of projection” as it is called, is 
supposed to be stretched across the half at which you 
are looking, like the parchment across a kettledrum. 

27. Here abc is half of such a hollow glass globe, 
with its meridians and parallels drawn upon it. ^is 
the place of your eye, and adce is the opening of the 
half globe, or the plane of projection. I have drawn 
the parallels on the plane of projection as they would 
appear to your eye at g, when looking at them on 
the inside of the globe ; the meridians are not put in, 
as they would crowd the figure too much. But when 
both parallels and meridians are fully drawn on the 
plane of projection, or the parchment as we called it, 
they have this appearance :— 



KHiiiS 


IM1 


Fig. 4- 


28. The meridians are all the same distance apart, 

* Accurately stated, the distance of the point of sight from the sphere 
■— ihc sine 45 0 of the radius of a Great Circle. 









22 


GEOGRAPHY. 


and so are the parallels when measured along the 
central meridian ; but as they get nearer the outside of 
the map you observe that the parallels become wider 
apart, and therefore the map is distorted at the edges, 
and the countries have not quite the same shape as 
they have on the globe. Still you get on the whole a 
fair idea of the general relation and proportions of all 
the countries in one half of the surface of the earth. 
For this reason, and because the globular projection is 
easy to make, it has been gradually adopted for the 
general map of the world in atlases. 

29. In these maps the meridians and parallels are 
curved lines, and therefore the shortest line between 
any two points on the globe must be a curve on the 
map. In maps of the land and for use by landsmen 
this is of no great importance, because the distances 
between the various places are not very great; but in 
charts which are used by seamen for working their 
course at sea it becomes a great practical inconvenience. 
A captain who has to navigate his ship say from Bristol 
to Charleston is naturally anxious to sail in the right 
direction between the two points. But on the maps 
we have hitherto described a straight line is not the 
direct line. To be a direct line it must be a curve— 
if you can understand that—because both meridians 
and parallels are curved. The direct line between two 
places on the same parallel or the same meridian 
would be easy to follow, as it would be merely the 
curve of the parallel or the meridian. But suppose 
the two places to be many degrees apart both in 
latitude and longitude, like Ceylon and the Cape 
of Good Hope, you would find that the line to be 
pursued was a very complicated curve, which few 
sailors could be expected to lay down correctly. 




MERC A TOR. 


23 


30. This difficulty became a very serious one when 
America was discovered and long voyages began to be 
taken, and to meet it a projection was invented by 
a Flemish mathematician called Mercator, in 1556, 
and perfected by Edward Wright, an Englishman, in 
1594, which is not only very clever, but has perfectly 
answered its purpose. In this method you may sup¬ 
pose the sphere to be enclosed in an upright cylinder 
or hollow roll of paper, with the point of sight in the 
centre of the sphere. 

31. Here enrs is the glass 
globe, with its North and South 
Poles, Equator, and parallels. 

The meridians are not drawn 
because they would only con¬ 
fuse us. abed is the roll of 
paper wrapped round the globe. 

Now if you suppose a small 
bright light to be placed at the 
centre, it will shine through 
the globe and will throw the 
shadows of the parallels on 
to the roll of paper, as you 
see them in the diagram—10 
will be close by, 20 will be a 
little farther off, and 30 farther 
off still. After that the shadows 
begin to spread very much, as 
you see; and if you compare 
the distance between 50 and 
60, or 60 and 70, on the 
globe and on the paper, you Fig. s . 

will see how much they have w'dened out. The dis- 

3 














































24 


GEOGRAPHY. 


tance between 70 and 80 would be much more 
than that between 60 and 70, and the shadow of 
90 (that is, the Pole) would of course go up through 
the end of the roll, and never be caught at all. 

I have shewn you only the upper hemisphere, but 
the lower one would be exactly like it, reversed. 
As for the meridians, they need no diagram, for if 
you think about it you will see that their shadows must 
be equi-distant straight lines, running straight up and 
down the roll. 

32. When the roll is unwrapt, supposing the 
shadows to remain fixed on the paper, it will have 
this appearance:— 



Fig. e. 





























MERCATOR'S PROJECTION. 


25 


33. Accordingly in a Mercator’s map the size of the 
countries at the north and south is out of proportion 
to those near the Equator. For instance, Iceland 
looks nearly as large as Borneo, and Greenland as 
South America, though Iceland is only 200 miles from 
north to south, and Borneo nearly 700, while Green¬ 
land is 1,400 miles and South America about 4,000. 
They keep their shape, but are very much too big, and 
therefore you must be on your guard in a Mercator’s 
map not to be deceived by the apparent size of countries 
near the Poles. But still for the sailor’s purposes 
Mercator’s map is very convenient. North and south 
are always straight up and down, and east and west 
straight across. All the meridians are parallel, and 
all the parallels are parallel too. The most ignorant 
sailor can lay down his course without calculation. 
In fact the invention of this map has been justly 
called one of the most remarkable and useful events 
of the sixteenth century. And why? because it en¬ 
ables common unlearned people to do easily and 
correctly what only clever learned people could have 
done without it. 

34. Hitherto we have spoken only of general maps, 
in which the whole world is got on to one or two 
sheets, and where a great distance like 100 miles is 
represented by half an inch or an inch. But maps 
are wanted for marching armies, selling properties, 
laying out railways, &c., and for these great detail 
is required; not only the general form of the coast, or 
the principal towns and roads, but every cottage and 
hedge, and lane and clump, must be exactly in its 
place. Now for doing this a different method is 
employed from that which we have yet spoken of. 
The latitudes and longitudes of the principal points 




2 6 


GEOGRAPHY. 


are found, and then the smaller ones are filled-in by 
the surveyors by a method called triangulation, 
because it is done by triangles, which I need not de¬ 
scribe to you. It is also called a trigonometrical 
survey because the triangles are calculated by a 
branch of mathematics called trigonometry. 

35. Here is a bit of what is called the Ordnance 
Survey of England, made in this way, on an inch 
scale, that is a scale of one inch to a mile, where 
each inch on the map represents a mile on the ground, 
half inch, half a mile, and so on. 



Fig. 7. 


36. The scale is, you see, the proportion between 
the size of the map and the size of the piece of 
ground which it represents; a small scale means 
that the map is small in proportion to the ground, 
and a large scale that it is larger in proportion. 












ORDNANCE MAPS. SCALE. 


27 


Therefore, in speaking of it, it is as well to name 
the proportion itself—the number of times which 
the one will go into the other. The inch scale 
is thus called 63360 because there are 63360 inches in 
one statute mile, and a mile on the map is one sixty- 
three-thousand-three-hundred-and-sixtieth part of a 
mile on the ground. Ordnance maps are made to 
other scales, even as large as 10 feet 6 inches to a 
mile, or -^th part of the original ground. At the end 
of the book you will find a table of the scales in use. 

37. Maps of the world or of large countries do not 
have scales marked on them, for, as I explained, they 
would be incorrect, except near the centre of the 
map. In the hemispheres (§28) you remember the 
parallels widen out towards the outside of the map, and 
appear to be farther apart than at their centre, though 
they are really parallel. And in Mercator’s map (§32) 
the meridians are parallel instead of sloping together; 
and the parallels, though drawn parallel, do really be¬ 
come vastly wider apart as they near the Poles. 

38. In a map for use in business or common life 
there must be no such uncertainties. On the inch 
map an inch must be a mile exactly, whether at the 
outside of the sheet, or in the middle, and measuring 
either north and south, or east and west. But vou 
will remember that in each of the projections the 
centre of the map was accurate, and that it was only 
at the outsides, at long distances from the centre, 
that it was distorted. And as a projection may be 
made with any spot in the world as its centre, and the 
maps we are speaking of do not cover more than 
a few miles each way, there is no practical difficulty 
in obtaining all the accuracy that is wanted. 





28 


GEOGRAPHY. 


39. I asked you before if you could read a map. 
Like reading a book, it is only to be done by practice, 
but I can perhaps give you some useful hints. 

(1) Before you begin get the scale well into 
your mind. A map is not a mere picture, and your 
object in looking at it is to get information ; therefore, 
first of all, look carefully to see how much the scale 
is, how many miles there are to an inch, or you will 
have no true sense of distance. 

(2) Next look at the character of the ground 
and the height of the hills. The slopes of the 
roads, the fall of the streams, the nature of the lakes 
and ponds, all depend on these things; therefore learn 
to interpret them with certainty. Now the rise and 
fall of ground is shewn in two ways—either by dark or 
light shading, according to the slone, or by contours. 



Fig. 8. 

Contours are lines which mark the same level all 
over the ground. Here is a map of a hill with 
contours, each 50 feet above or below the other. Each 
line is strictly level round the hill, and is as if a flood 












CONTOURS. 


20 


had risen by steps of 50 feet at a time, and had left 
its mark at each successive step. Where the contours 
spread out the ground is flatter, and where they 
crowd together the ground is steep, and knowing that 
they are 50 feet below one another, you can easily 
tell the height of any part above or below another 
part, and therefore the slope of the hill. The 
other method is by what are termed hachures. 
In this method, the thicker the lines, and the 



Fig. 9. 

closer they are together, the steeper is the ground; 
and the waterpartings and crests of the slopes should 
be traceable by the junction of the lines representing 
the two slopes. Each method has its ^advantages ; 
the hachures are much the more effective, and the 
alterations of slope can be beautifully traced, but it is 
impossible to infer the actual height of the inequa¬ 
lities from them. Contours, on the other hand, are 


* A thoroughly satisfactory example of the drawing and shading of 
mountains, showing how far, even on a very small scale, minute features 
may be brought out, is furnished by the maps in the “ Sketch of the 
Mountains and River-basins of India,” by Mr. Trelawney Saunders (Stan¬ 
ford, 1870). Another on a larger scale by the same geographer is the map 
of “Jerusalem, Ancient and Modern,” in the “ Historical Atlas of Ancient 
Geography ’’(Murray, 1873). 








30 


GEOGRAPHY ,. 


much less striking to look at. They do not give the 
look of the ground, but they tell you exactly what the 
height and slope of it are. Shading is sometimes done 
with lines which look like contours, but are not really 
so ; and this is misleading. 

(3) There are many smaller signs which will give in¬ 
formation if you know how to read them. In the 
Ordnance maps you can tell whether a road or rail¬ 
way is in cutting or in embankment; that is to say, 
whether it is below the surface of the country, or 
raised above it, since the two are represented dif¬ 
ferently. In fact so complete are these maps that 
you can distinguish turnpike roads, cross roads, foot¬ 
paths, canals, and lines of telegraph. (See the list on 
page 126.) 

40. We have been speaking of maps to a tolerably 
large scale. A map of a continent or country is 
necessarily to a smaller scale, and such full details as 
those just named cannot be got in, but a faithful repre¬ 
sentation of the general face of the land ought to be 
given — the valleys and ravines ; the waterpartings; 
the watersheds gradually scored deeper and deeper 
with streams; the rise of the plateaus from the 
plains, and their flat tops ; the gradual or sudden 
slopes of the hills—we ought to be able on a good 
map to see such general features of the country, as 
well as the positions of the places. And on such a 
map as that of Palestine in the Historical Atlas of 
Ancient Geography, all this is evident enough. 

41. Before leaving this part of the subject there are 
one or two other things to mention. On looking 
again at the globe there are some lines which we have 
not yet noticed—the tropics of Cancer and 
Capricorn, and the Arctic and Antarctic circles. 






TROPICS. POLAR CIRCLES. 


3 i 


42. The Tropics are two parallels of latitude— 
Cancer 23 0 28' north of the Equator, and Capricorn 
23 0 28' south of it. At every spot on the belt of the 
earth’s surface between those two parallels, on two 
days in the year the sun stands right over head at mid¬ 
day. Below the tropic of Capricorn, and above that of 
Cancer, he never stands right over-head, at any place, 
on any day in the year. Why this is you will find in 
the Primer of Astronomy. They are called tropics 
from a Greek word meaning to turn, because at those 
lines the sun seems to reach one side of his path 
and turn back to the other. The space between them 
is often called “ the tropics,” and a country there is 
called a “ tropical country.” 

43. The Arctic and Antarctic circles are each the 
same distance (23 0 28') from the North and South 
Poles that the tropics are from the Equator. The 
Arctic circle is 66° 32' N., and the Antarctic one 
66° 32' S. lat. At every spot within these there 
is at least one day in the year in which the sun 
remains in sight for the whole 24 hours, and at least 
one day in which he is out of sight for the whole 
24 hours. Thus at the Arctic circle, on June 21st, he 
is visible for the whole 24 hours, and on Dec. 21st 
he does not appear above the horizon at all. At the 
Pole he remains out of sight below the horizon from 
Sept. 23rd to March 21st, and from that day till 
Sept. 23rd again, he is in sight both day and night, 
mounting by June 24th to the height of 23° 28' above 
the horizon. The North Cape is in lat. 70° 10', or 
2V2 degrees within the Arctic circle, and by joining 
one of Cook’s tours you may-go there next summer, 
and see for yourself the “ midsummer, midnight, 
Norway sun set into sunrise ” as the poet says. 



32 


GEOGRAPHY. 


44. Between these tropics and circles lie the 
zones or belts, into which the surface of the earth 
was for long divided by geographers. There are five 
of them. (1) The Torrid Zone, including all the space 
between the tropic of Cancer on the north, and the 
tropic of Capricorn on the south. Within this space, 
46° 56' wide from south to north, we have seen that 
the noonday sun stands vertical overhead at every spot 
twice in every year. (2) The two Temperate Zones, 
north and south. They reach from the tropic of Cancer 
to the Arctic circle, and from the tropic of Capricorn 
to the Antarctic circle. Each is 43 0 4' wide from 
north to south, and in each the sun is never vertical, 
but on the other hand there is. always a day and a 
night—that is to say, the sun rises and sets in each 
24 hours throughout the year. (3) The two Frigid 
Zones occupy the remaining space. They are each 
23 0 28' from the circle to the Pole, or 46° 56' from 
circle to circle, measuring over the Pole to the other 
side ; and in each, as already explained, during a 
part of the year the sun never rises, and during a 
part of it he never sets. So much for the tropics and 
zones. 

45. Mercator’s map, you recollect, enabled the sailor 
to mark his course as a straight line. But having 
got this, and the correct latitude and longitude, 
there is still another thing wanted. The map, we 
will say, tells the sailor to sail north-east, that is, 
half way between north and east; but how is he to 
know where north and east are? For the north 
he has to look at the Pole Star, which stands above 
the North Pole, and east is roughly where the sun 
is at six in the morning. But suppose it is cloudy 
or foggy, and neither sun nor stars can be seen; or 



MA RINER 'S CO MPA SS. 


33 


suppose even that it is fine, how is he to maintain 
through the day the course which he was able to take 
when he saw the Pole Star, or the sun rising ? 

46. This he is able to do by the mariner’s com¬ 
pass, or needle, which is a straight steel magnet, 
balanced on its middle in a box so hung as to 
be always level however the ship may be moving. 
Being a magnet, the needle always points towards the 
north, and as it carries above it a round card divided 
into 32 parts or “points,” you will see that the head 
of the ship can be kept in any direction that the 
captain likes. The ship is now being steered in the 



10. 


Fig. 








34 


GEOGRAPHY. 


direction of N.N.E., and if, on looking at his map, 
the captain saw that he ought to go N.E. by N., he 
would alter the helm so that the centre, line of the 
ship should agree with that point, and all would be 
right. 

47. The compass was invented in the 12th or 13th 
century, no one knows by whom. Before its discovery 
ships crept about close to land, or if they ventured 
out, as St. Paul’s ship did, for an open course of 5 or 
600 miles, were at once in the greatest uncertainty 
when the sun and stars were hid. 

48. I said that the needle pointed towards the 
north, but it does not always point exactly to it. In 
fact there are only two lines on the earth’s surface 
along which the needle does point to the true north, 
and neither of the two has any connection with parallels 
or meridians, but seems to cross them at haphazard. 
One of them sweeps up from the Antarctic circle, 
enters the east coast of S. America, in S. lat. 24 0 , 
a little south of Rio Janeiro, leaves it again at 
Cayenne, north of the mouth of the Amazons, crosses 
the Atlantic outside the West Indian islands, enters 
North America near Cape Hatteras, and runs to a 
point north-west of Hudson’s Bay. The other line 
lies nearly opposite across the world, and is much 
more irregular in its course. It too comes up from 
the Antarctic circle, and enters South Australia in 
E. long. 129 0 , S. lat. 32 0 , in the Australian Bight. 
It leaves it again in King’s Sound, lat. 17 0 S., and 
long. 123 0 E., and taking a sudden bend to the west, 
passes outside of Java, Sumatra, and the Malabar coast, 
enters the continent of Asia in E. long. 6o°, runs to the 
west of the Caspian, passes between lakes Ladoga and 
Onega, and enters the Arctic Sea near the North Cape. 




HOW THE COMPASS VARIES. 


35 


49. Along these lines there is no variation of the 
compass, but the needle points straight to the true 
north; and as you leave them on either side it 
varies. To the east of them it points to the west 
of the true north, and to the west of them it points 
east of the true north, more and more as you forsake 
the lines of no variation. At the south of Greenland 
the variation is 50 degrees West, and if you wanted 
to steer N.N.E. through Smith’s Sound, as the Arctic 
Expedition did, you would have to set the ship’s 
head South by West. (Look at the Compass, fig. 10.) 
The variation at London is 19 0 26' West, at Cork 24 0 
West, and so on. The lines of variation all over the 
world are marked on the Admiralty charts, so that 
no mistake need be made. 

50. This variation is not always the same at the 
same place, but changes year by year or day by day. 
It was first noticed by Columbus on Sept. 13, 1492. 
In the year 1580 the variation at London was n° 15' 
East. In 1660 it had decreased to nothing, and the 
needle at London then stood true ; but it immediately 
began to vary on the other side, and increased till 
1818, when it reached a limit of 24 0 30' West; then 
it began to decrease, and now the variation there 
is 19 0 26' West. 

51. The lines of variation all come together at two 
places. One is north of Hudson’s Bay, near Port 
Kennedy, in 75 0 N. lat., ioo° W. long. A second is 
in the Polar Sea, north of Nova Zembla. These 
points are called magnetic poles, and if you take 
the compass-needle to one of them it will behave 
very strangely. It will not remain level, but will dip, 
and stand straight up and down, the north end down 
and the south straight in the air ; also, if it is prevented 

4 




36 


GEOGRAPHY. 


from doing this, and obliged to remain level, it will 
turn equally well to all points, just as a common piece 
of steel, not a magnet, would do; in fact over the 
magnetic pole the north is nothing to the magnet. 
The variation of the needle east or west is called 
its declination : the dip up and down, is called its 
inclination. 

52. Time. Another remark before we close this 
part of the Primer. We have seen that the circumfer¬ 
ence of the earth is divided into 360 parts or degrees. 
As it goes round on its axis once in 24 hours, its 
surface moves at the rate of 15 degrees an hour, 
since 15 x 24 = 360. I am not speaking now of 
the movement of the earth round the sun, but of 
its motion on its axis only—its rotation, not its 
revolution. The sun is standing still at a distance, and 
the earth spins round once in 24 hours from west 
to east; and thus every place comes into view of 
the sun—which is sunrise ; arrives right opposite 
him—which is noonday ; and loses sight of him 
again—which is sunset. But move a short distance 
on either side of your own place, and each of these 
events will happen sooner or later than before. If 
you move to the East, sooner; if to the West, 
later. The difference made by moving one minute of 
longitude would be 4 seconds of time, and by one 
degree of longitude 4 minutes of time. 

53. And this explains why, when you go from 
the place in which you live to one east of it, your 
watch seems to lose. It is not that your watch 
loses, but that you have arrived at a place where the 
sun comes into view of the earth, and comes to 
12 o’clock, sooner than where you usually live. Sup¬ 
pose you go from London to Hamburg. Hamburg is 



TIME OF TWO PLACES. 


37 


east of London by 10 degrees oflongitude. Now the 
earth turns once round, that is through 360 degrees 
of longitude, in 24 hours; and as from London to 
Hamburg is 10 degrees, when you are at Hamburg 
you are one 36th part of 24 hours, or 40 minutes, 
nearer the sun than in London; that is to say, the 
earth arrives at sunrise and at 12 o’clock, 40 minutes 
sooner in Hamburg than it does in London. But 
your watch keeps London time, and therefore, when 
it is 12 o’clock at Hamburg, your watch is 11.20, 
because at that moment it is 11.20 at London. In 
other words, London will have to travel 40 minutes 
farther east before it comes opposite the sun for 
12 o’clock. If when it is 12 at Hamburg they 
were to telegraph the time from London, it would 
be 11.20 ; and if when it is 12 at London they were 
to telegraph to you from Hamburg, it would be 12.40 
there—Hamburg would have passed 12 o’clock, or the 
meridian line, by 40 minutes. 

54. Go to a place west of London and the opposite 
happens. Take New York, which is 75 0 West longi¬ 
tude. Now 75 times 4 minutes is 300 minutes, or 5 
hours ; that is to say, 5 hours after it has struck 12 
o’clock at London, New York will have come whirling 
round to the same place at which London was 5 hours 
before, and will arrive opposite the sun, and have its 
12 o’clock; and meantime London will have gone on 
with its day, and its clocks will be striking 5 in the 
afternoon. And this accounts for the fact that tele¬ 
graphs arrive in New York from London apparently 
before the hour at which they are sent off. Thus, 
say the Boat-race is won by Oxford at 1.35 p.m. The 
news is telegraphed to New York, and arrives there, 
we’ll say, by 2 London time.. But at 2 London time 




33 


GEOGRAPHY. 


it is only 9 New York time (5 hours earlier), so that 
New York actually hears of the event 4 hours and 25 
minutes before the hour at which it happened ! 

55. After the railways were made it was found very 
inconvenient to have one time in London and another 
at Exeter or Birmingham, and so in all common matters 
the towns of England sink their own correct time, 
and the clocks are set to that of London. Thus a 
train leaving London at 9 arrives at Bristol in 4 
hours, and finds the clocks there 1, exactly as they 
are in London ; though if the clocks told the correct 
time they would show 12.50, Bristol being 2 0 34' west 
of London, equivalent to rather more than 10 minutes 
of time. And communication will increase until the 
same thing that has been done in England will have 
to be done outside of it, and sooner or later all 
countries will have to keep London time. 

56. As you go farther and farther round the world, 
the difference between the hour where you are and the 
hour at Greenwich will increase till it reaches 12 hours, 
and if you sail on till you get back to Greenwich again 
you will have gained or lost 24 hours, according as you 
sailed east or west—gained if you went east by the Suez 
Canal, lost if you went west by America. In the first 
case, when you got back, if it were Tuesday on board 
the ship, it would be Monday on the newspapers in 
London ; in the second case, it would be Tuesday on 
board and Wednesday on the newspapers. To correct 
this the log or journal of the ship is always altered 
when it arrives at the meridian of 180° (half-way round 
the world from London), and a day is added or dropt 
in the reckoning as she has sailed East or West. But 
the old sailors were not always careful to do this, and 
some curious things happened in consequence. When 



ANGLE OF NINE 7 > DEGREES. 


39 


Captain Basil Hall got to Manilla (120° E. long.) he 
found that their Sunday was his Monday. At Tahiti 
the reverse has happened, and they keep Sunday on 
a Saturday. “ At Sitka in Russian America (W. long. 
136°) half the people are Russians who have arrived 
from Russia across Asia, and half are Americans who 
have come from the United States. Hence when it 
is Sunday with the Russians it is Saturday with the 
Americans; and the Russians are busy on Monday, 
while the Americans are in church on Sunday, to 
the great interruption of business.” (See Clarke’s 
Geographical Reader .) 

57. Now you can understand what I meant when 
I said (§ 19) that the traveller looked at his chro¬ 
nometer to find the longitude. His chronometer is 
set to Greenwich time, and always tells Greenwich 
time, and therefore if he finds by his observations 
that at the place he is at it is 12 o’clock when his 
chronometer is 3, he will know that he is three hours 
east of Greenwich, and 3 hours x 15 degrees = 45 de¬ 
grees East longitude. So important is this simple 
method of finding the longitude that in 1714 our 
Government offered ^30,000 for a chronometer which 
would tell it within even so great a distance as thirty 
miles ! 

58. Once more before we leave our globe for 
the earth itself, see how these scientific terms 
have worked their way into common speech. You 
have often heard the expression—“ angle of ninety 
degrees “angle of forty-five.” You remember that 
each meridian is divided into 360 degrees over its 
whole length. If, therefore, from the Equator over 
the Pole, round by the Equator and South Pole to 
the starting-point again was 36a degrees, it stands to 




4 o 


GEOGRAPHY. 


reason that from the Equator to the Pole will be one 
quarter of that, or 90 degrees. From e to n is 



Fig. 11. 

90 degrees ; and the angle at c, the angle ecn, which 
is opposite that opening of 90 degrees, is called 
an “ angle of 90 degrees,” or a “ right angle,”—that 
which a stick makes with the floor when you stand it 
quite upright. And an angle of 45 degrees, wed, 
is exactly half the angle of 90°—half way between 
being level and being upright. 

THE EARTH. 

59. We will now leave the lines and figures on the 
globe, and go to the Earth itself, and the land and 
water upon it. 

60. In the foregoing account we have spoken of the 
earth as a sphere, or an exactly round ball. But this, 
though practically true for our purpose then, is not 
strictly correct, for the earth is not exactly round. 
You can see it is not. The mere roughness of the fields 
and roads and hills, not to speak of the high mountains 
or the depths of the sea, all tell you that it is not 
exactly round. On so big a ball as the earth, how¬ 
ever, these things do not count for much. The 











FIGURE OF THE EARTH. 


41 


highest mountain is not quite 30,000 feet high, and 
the deepest place known in the sea is hardly so deep. 
Add these together and you have 60,000 feet, and 
what is 60 thousand feet to a vast ball like the earth, 
which is 42 million feet through ? it is only like the 
little roughnesses on the rind of a smooth orange, 
or the tiny pits and dots on the shell of an ostrich’s 
egg. In proportion to an orange the 60 thousand 
feet would be the thickness of the paper on 
which this page is printed. These, therefore, 
may go for nothing. 

61. But there are other things, not mere rough¬ 
nesses, but actual differences in the shape or figure 
of the earth. The earth has been measured—through, 
round, and across; they are still measuring it, and 
always coming nearer the truth ; but at present what 
we know of its figure is that round the Equator it is 
not quite a true circle, but is very, very slightly oval. 
Its diameter in *one direction is 7,926 2 /i statute miles, 
and in another 7,924^ miles, a difference of two miles 
in nearly 8,000. Then again, from Pole to Pole the 
distance is 7,899 statute miles, so that the diameter 
there is less than that at the Equator by some 26 
miles, and the earth is consequently that much bigger 
round the Equator than it is round the Poles; a 
shape which is called an oblate spheroid. Such, as 
far as we know at present, are the differences in the 
figure of the earth from what it would be if it were 
round like a billiard-ball. 

62. It has been sometimes said that the difference 
in size between the Equator and the Poles has come 
from the earth having spun round while it was in a 


* Diameter at 15° 34 E. long. = 41,852,700 feet 

Ditto at 105 0 34' E. long. = 41,839,944 do. 

Ditto at Poles . . . . = 41,706,858 do. 







42 


GEOGRAPHY. 


soft state, bulging out as a ball of clay might bulge 
if put on a wire and made to spin very fast; but we 
know too little of the history of the earth at those 
early times to allow us to say if the difference in shape 
arose from that cause or not. But two things I may 
tell you about it. ist. That thin band of 13 miles thick 
on a ball of 8,000, is enough to give the sun and moon 
such a purchase on the earth that they are gradually 
pulling its axis round and altering its attitude with re¬ 
gard to the stars. This is called “the precession of the 
equinoxes,” and it may cause in time a great change 
in climate, and cover England with perpetual ice. 
2nd. But for that trivial flattening at the Poles and 
projection at the Equator, the sea would not be dis¬ 
tributed over the surface of the earth as it is, but would 
be gathered round the Equator, leaving a great conti¬ 
nent of dry land at each Pole. 

63. I cannot attempt to give you any idea of the 
way in which the earth is measured. It is enough for us 
to know that the distances have been exactly measured, 
and that they are as I have stated them. But notwith¬ 
standing what I said of the roughnesses of the earth 
being comparatively so small, you may naturally ask 
how so uneven a body can be measured as if it were 
a smooth ball; and if it will not make a great differ¬ 
ence in the length of the diameter if it is measured 
to the top of a mountain or to the bottom of the sea. 
And your question is quite right. Such measure¬ 
ments must be taken most exactly to be of use, 
and therefore the level of the sea, which is believed 
to be about half way between the tops of the moun¬ 
tains and the bottom of the ocean, is chosen as the 
surface of the world, and the measurements given 
above are those of an oblate spheroid as large as 




LAND AND WATER. 


43 


the earth would be if the dry land were removed, and 
the ocean covered everything. 

64. But you may still say, “ The level of the sea ? 
The sea is always rising or falling, and never at one 
level.” Well, then, the level which is taken in all 
such calculations, in the Ordnance Survey of England, 
is the average level between high and low water at 
Liverpool; and the diameter and circumference of 
the earth are the diameter and circumference of a 
ball covered with a smooth surface starting at that 
height. For many other purposes the level of high- 
water at London Bridge, or, as it is called, * Trinity 
high-water mark, is taken. 

65. Now, on looking at the globe, or a map of the 
world, the first thing that must strike every one is 
how much more water there is on it than dry¬ 
land. The whole surface is 197 millions of square 
miles; but the dry land—that is to say, those parts 
of the earth which are high enough to stand up 
out of the water—is only at most 52 millions, leaving 
145 millions for the ocean. In other words, the land 
is about one-quarter of the whole surface, and the 
ocean about three-quarters. 

66. This is the first thing that strikes us. The 
second is, how very unequally the land is arranged. 
Instead of being spread evenly all over the sur¬ 
face, it is collected together, much more to the north 
than to the south, and to the east than to the west. 
There are 38 million square miles of land above the 
Equator, to 13^ below it; in other words, nearly 
three times as much. Strangely enough, London is 
very nearly in the centre of this mass of land ; and 


* Trinity high-water mark. So called from the Trinity House, a corpora- 
tion which has charge of pilots, lighthouses, buoys, and other nautical matters 



GEOG RA PI IV, 


*4 



Fig. 12. 



Fig. 13 

































TWO GREAT CONTINENTS . 


45 


placing ourselves over its position on the globe (as in 
fig. 12), we have nine-tenths of the entire land of the 
world in view below us. In like manner, New 
Zealand, which is opposite England on the other side 
of the world, is in the centre of the ocean hemisphere, 
and has a waste of water on all sides of it. There is 
land round the South Pole, estimated at nearly double 
the size of Europe. But of this next to nothing is 
known, it is enclosed in eternal ice, without men and 
women, apparently without life, and all but inaccessible. 
The difference between the land east of London and 
the land west of it is also very great, as may be seen 
on any general map of the World ; they do not at all 
balance, but there are 36 million square miles to 
the east, and only 15 to the west. 

67. The third thing that will strike us is that, 
though the mass of the land is thus collected in 
the northern part of the world, it seems to be 
everywhere reaching down towards the south. 
South America, Africa, and Australia stretch out like 
gigantic fingers and thumb towards the Southern 
Pole ; and the same on all sides farther north, for 
India, Malacca, Kamschatka, Corea, Florida, and even 
Sweden, Norway, and Greenland, all seem to be 
pointing down in the same southward direction. 

68. Returning to the dry land in the Northern 
Hemisphere, and trying to look at it as if we had never 
seen or heard of it before, we shall see that it consists 
of two great continents or masses, one to the 
east and one to the west. For Europe and Asia are 
absolutely one continuous tract, with Australasia as 
its outlying islands; and Africa—though the con¬ 
nection has been snapt at Gibraltar and Sicily and 
the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and again within the 



46 


GEOGRAPHY. 


last ten years at Suez—is still really part and parcel 
of the rest. Thus the Old World, looked at as mere 
land, and apart from political or historical divisions, 
is one great continent. And the New World, too, on 
the western side of the globe, is still one continent, 
though its upper and lower portions are held together 
by a very narrow strip of land. 

69. We will now look more closely still at the two 
sides of the world, east and west, the Old World and 
the New, and see what strikes us about them. 

70. In general direction the Old World runs 
across the globe, not up and down it. From Cape 
de Verde, the most westerly point of Africa, to the 
most eastern cape of Asia, the land stretches without 
interruption for 174 degrees of longitude, nearly half 
the circuit of the world. And its structure or frame¬ 
work lies in the same direction. Through the entire 
length of this great continent runs a line of mountains 
and high ground, which, notwithstanding a few breaks in 
its European portion, forms an almost continuous wall 
or chain for the whole distance, rises as it goes east¬ 
ward, attains an enormous height and mass, and seems 
to gird, and hem in, and consolidate the vast continent 
around and above it. Beginning on the shores of the 
Atlantic in the Pyrenees and Atlas, it continues through 
the Alps and Carpathians, the Caucasus and the range of 
El Burz, to the Hindoo Koosh and the high plateau of 
Pamir, called “ the roof of the world,” which stands 
like a huge fortress, 15,000 feet high, to bar the direct 
road between east and west. Thence it passes to the 
still higher tracts of Tibet, great plains exceeding in 
height the highest summits of the Alps, enclosed 
between the lofty ramparts of the Himalayas on the 
south and the Kuen-lun mountains on the north ; and 



THE OLD WORLD, 


47 



■wV* 


















4 S 


GEOGRAPHY. 


thence the mountain wall is prolonged in the ranges of 
Yuen-ling, In-shan, and Stanovoi, till it passes finally 
to the Pacific Ocean at Behring’s Strait. 

71. Such is the backbone of the great continent of 
the Old World, and like a true backbone it sends out 
its ribs and flanks on either side of it. The sierras of 
Spain, the Apennines, the Alps of Turkey and Greece, 
the Taurus, Zagros, and Suleiman mountains, the 
Indian Ghats, and Burman ranges, on the south ; the 
Cevennes, the Jura, the Vosges, the Ural, on the 
north, form its ribs; while between and around these 
lie the flanks of lowland, such as India and Burmah, 
the Steppes, and the great plain of Central Europe and 
Northern Asia. 

7 2. The great plain which lies to the north of 
this vast mountain barrier is a feature not less remark¬ 
able than itself. Beginning in the Midland Counties 
of England, it stretches over the whole width of the 
Old World, through the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, 
and Siberia. The Ural mountains alone cross it, 
but they hardly alter its character—a wide, gently 
swelling, gently sloping plain, stretching from the 
mountains to the sea, drained by some of the largest 
rivers of the world, and exposed over a great part to 
a frightfully cold and inclement climate. 

73. These plains and the mountain range have been 
of vast importance in the world’s history. South of 
the mountains, in India, Mesopotamia, Greece, Italy, 
Spain, were the ancient seats of civilisation and wealth, 
an inviting climate and happy life ; north of them, in 
the high plains, were cold, poverty, and barbarism, 
fierce hordes of wild and savage men. The Medes who 
took Babylon, the Scythians and Parthians who ravaged 
Palestine and Egypt, the Huns, Goths,and Vandals who 



CENTRAL ASIA. 


49 


desolated Italy and Spain, the Turks who conquered 
both India and Greece, all descended from these lofty 
plains; and all entered the south, and passed from 
barbarism to civilisation, through the passes in this 
wall of mountains. In modern times this has been re¬ 
versed. It is now we of the low warm countries who 
are penetrating into the high bleak ones. And one 
of the great geographical and commercial problems 
of the present day is to find means for bringing down 
the wool and minerals from the lofty plains of Tibet 
and Cashmere to the lowlands and the sea, in ex¬ 
change for the cloth and the cutlery of Europe. 

74. North of Tibet, and enclosed between it and 
the Altai mountains, which overlook the long plains of 
Siberia, stretch the savage deserts of Gobi and Mon¬ 
golia, the home of the Mongols. West of these, and 
reaching from the foot of Pamir to the Caspian, is a 
region which has played a most important part in 
history—the great district of Turkestan, the original 
seat of the Turks and many other European nations. 
That immense district, with that of Tibet—which is 
distinct from Turkestan, though agreeing with it in 
this one feature—has been called the great conti¬ 
nental region, or region of “continental” streams, 
because its waters are mostly “contained” within itself. 
Tibet is so high, so far inland, and so enclosed, that a 
large part of its rivers cannot get to the sea, and have 
to empty themselves into lakes. Turkestan, however, 
is as low as Tibet is high. From the heights of Pamir, 
and the “ roof of the world,” the mountains suddenly 
descend, and two immense rivers, the Amoo Daria and 
Sir Daria (Oxus and Jaxartes) rush down to the plains 
14,000 feet below. But not to reach the ocean, though 
from a different cause than before. While Tibet is 




5o 


GEOGRAPHY. 


too lofty and too much shut in, Turkestan is too low, 
and the rivers just mentioned and the other streams 
of the plains of Turkestan flow either into the Sea 
of Aral, which is a few feet above the ocean, or into 
the Caspian, which is a few feet below it. In fact 
the “ continental ” region penetrates far into Europe, 
and embraces half of Russia; for the river Volga, the 
largest of European rivers, empties itself into the 
Caspian and does not come near the ocean. Thus 
this region, notwithstanding a difference of many thou¬ 
sand feet in the level of its two portions, has in both 
the characteristic that its waters are all contained 
within itself. It stretches from within a very few miles 
of Petersburg to the neighbourhood of the Yellow Sea, 
and contains fully two million square miles. 

75 * If we now turn to the New World we shall 
find that in many respects it forms a striking contrast 
to the Old one. Instead of running in the general 
direction of the parallels of latitude, east and west, 
America stretches almost directly north and south, 
along the meridians of longitude; and instead of 
being compact and massive, like the principal part of 
the Old World, it is long and straggling, with a large 
extent of sea-coast, and with a very near approach to 
a separation between its two portions. Instead of its 
centre being occupied by a great mass of highlands, 
guarded by mountains all but impossible to climb, 
and when climbed cold, bleak, barren, and desert, 
contained within itself and shut off from the rest of 
creation—the mountains of America are mostly ranged 
close to one of its coasts, and its lowlands abound in 
splendid rivers, which form natural roads to every part 
of the country, and make the vast continents of South 
and North America in great part accessible from the 




THE NEW WORLD. 


51 



o 


i — -— 




i 

J 


Fig 1 5- 


amu 























S3 


GEOGRAPHY. 


sea to steamers. Its remarkable features are its 
mountains, plains, and rivers —the mountains of 
huge height and great beauty, and containing more 
active volcanoes than any other range, the plains the 
largest and the rivers the most extensive that the world 
possesses. 

76. It is the position of the mountains that first 
strikes the eye. In South America the Andes, as the 
mountains are called, run close to the western side of 
the continent—a continuous chain of 4,000 miles in 
length, often of double and triple parallel ridges, at a 
mean height of 11,000 feet, with great active volcanoes, 
and numerous peaks varying from 16,000 to 24,000 
feet in height. At the Isthmus they are interrupted ; 
but immediately start again, and under the name of 
the Rocky mountains run in the same northerly 
direction, though at a greater distance from the 
sea-coast, through the United States and British 
America, till they end on the shore of the Arctic 
Ocean, after an almost unbroken course of more 
than 8,000 miles. Such a range, so vast, so lofty, 
so precipitous, so volcanic, so regular, is unparalleled 
in the world. But it is even more astonishing when 
taken in connection with the enormous rivers to 
which it gives rise. 

77. The rivers of America are the largest in the 
world, not only for their length and volume of water, 
but for the extent of their basins. (§ 200 ) In South 
America three rivers, the Orinoco, the Amazons, and 
the La Plata, take three-quarters of the whole drainage 
of the country to the Atlantic, and each of these 
draws a large amount of its supply from the flanks 
of the Andes. Thus the curious sight is presented 
of rivers rismg within a short distance of one ocean. 



RIVERS OF SOUTH AMERICA. 


53 


and being compelled to traverse thousands of miles 
to cast themselves into another. In this respect 
they find a likeness, though on a smaller scale, in 
the Po ; which, while it rises in the maritime Alps 
near the Gulf of Genoa, is compelled to cross the 
whole of the plains of Lombardy to discharge itself 
into the opposite sea of the Adriatic. So also in 
South-eastern Australia, the Murray river rises be¬ 
hind Brisbane, within ioo miles of the Pacific, and 
yet runs 1,000 miles, to enter the Southern Ocean at 
Adelaide. In North America the Mississippi and Mis¬ 
souri receive much of their drainage from the Rocky 
mountains, and run a course even longer than that of 
the Amazons; but the picture is not so startling as 
that in South America, because the Rocky mountains 
stretch much farther from the west coast than the 
Andes do, and because the rivers do not cross the con¬ 
tinent so directly, but derive much of their water from 
the Alleghany mountains on the east coast, and the 
low watershed about Lake Superior in the north. But 
to return to South America. A great part of it may 
be roughly described as an alluvial plain of more than 
2,000 miles long, sloping very gently up from the 
Atlantic to a prodigious ridge of mountains on the 
extreme edge of its farther side. True the centre of 
the country is occupied by an important plateau, 
which gives birth to other considerable rivers, but it 
sinks into insignificance when measured against the 
Andes, and does not interfere with the general truth 
of the rough description just given. 

78. The New World has its “continental ” districts, 
but on a smaller scale than that of Central Asia. 
One is in the bosom of the Bolivian Andes, a plateau 
of about 1.100 miles in length by 120 wide, and from 



54 


GEOGRAPHY. 


12 to 13,000 feet high, where there is a large lake 
called Titicaca, and other lakes, which receive the 
rivers of the plateau. Another is the Great Salt Lake 
district of Utah in North America, between the Rocky 
mountains and the Sierra Nevada, 500 miles by 280, 
and from 4,000 to 5,000 feet high, the waters of which 
have no outlet and form a series of salt lakes. 

79. But the most remarkable lakes of America are the 
fresh water ones of the Northern Continent, which have 
no parallel elsewhere. They are scattered more or 
less over the whole of British America, chiefly in 
its central and southern portions, on the northern 
slopes of the upper waterparting of the Missouri 
and Mississippi; and they form the largest mass 
of fresh water on the surface of the earth. In the 
northern portion, the Hudson’s Bay Territory, there 
are lakes of large area—such as Great Slave Lake, 
12,000 square miles, Great Bear Lake, to, 000, Winni¬ 
peg, 9,000. But they are far surpassed by those some¬ 
what farther south. These are five in number, each 
running into the other, and each lower than the last— 
Lake Superior, 627 feet above sea-level, Huron and 
Michigan 590, Erie 564, and Ontario 232, from which 
the river St. Lawrence leads direct into the Atlantic. 
Between Erie and Ontario are the Falls of Niagara. 
Lake Superior is the size of Ireland, and 900 feet 
deep. The depth of some of the others is still greater. 
They cover in all 94,000 square miles, and form 
nearly one-third of the basin of the St. Lawrence; 
their beds go down to 400 feet below the sea-level ; 
and they contain more than half the fresh water of 
the globe. 

80. But there are other points in which the New 
World is unlike the Old one. 



DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COUNTRIES. 


The natural circumstances which make the most 
important and radical differences between continents or 
countries, and give one an advantage over another, 
independent of the energy of its inhabitants, are 
three :— 

1. Length and indentation of coast-line or 
seaboard. 

2. Long, large, navigable rivers. 

3. Good climate. 

Of these, coast-line means length of shore, with 
bays, gulfs, estuaries, and headlands; to shelter ship¬ 
ping, to be occupied with towns and villages, fisheries, 
ship-yards, harbours, docks, and industry and civilisa¬ 
tion of all kinds, and to nurture the independence 
and love of adventure which are the virtues of sailors. 
Rivers mean easy communication with the interior, 
so that the productions of other countries may be sent 
up to the inland places, and those of the country 
itself brought down for export. And good climate 
means those natural conditions of heat and weather 
and health, without which it is not possible to use the 
two other advantages when you have got them. 

81. Now looking at the world in the light of these 
three conditions, it is easy to see the difference between 
its different parts, and how the division of the Old World 
into three continents came about. For though, as we 
have already seen, the Old World is one great mass 
of land, yet when employed in the service of man it 
naturally divides itself into the well-known three por¬ 
tions of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Africa has 
in many parts a poor coast-line, few harbours, few rivers 
for its size, and much unhealthy climate; and with 
the exception of Egypt, Algeria, the Cape Colonies, 
and a few other places on the coast, the whole of that 




56 


GEOGRAPHY. 


immense expanse of land, 12 millions of square miles, 
abounding in rich resources, may be said to be given 
over to barbarism, idleness, and cruelty. The tse-tse 
fly, fatal to horses and cattle, is alone enough to 
prevent the spread of agriculture in certain districts. 
Egypt and the Cape owe their prosperity mainly to the 
Nile and the harbours of Simon’s Bay and Algoa Bay. 
What might Africa not be at this moment if its vast 
bulk were pierced by a Baltic or a Mediterranean Sea, 
which would admit ships and commerce with their 
civilising influences to penetrate into its interior ! 

82. Of the mainland of Asia, India and China are 
the only fully peopled, industrious, prosperous portion. 
And why ? because China has an indented coast-line 
with estuaries and harbours ; and both have large, long, 
navigable rivers, and climates, which though not ab¬ 
solutely good are yet quite tolerable. On the other 
hand Arabia, with a rocky inaccessible sea-coast, and 
no rivers, is a desert. Persia is almost equally without 
means of access, and equally desert. The countries of 
Central Asia are cut off from the rest of the world by 
their height, and want of connection with the sea, 
and their severe climate; while the people of the 
vast plains of Siberia, one-fourth larger than the 
whole of Europe, watered by three of the noblest 
rivers in the world, have these advantages neutralised 
by the extreme cold, and, like the districts last men¬ 
tioned, are wild and uncivilised, and mainly dependent 
on hunting or fishing and other casual modes of life. 
The population of Siberia is not as much as one 
inhabitant to a square mile. 

83. With all this Europe is in happy contrast. 
In length of coast-line it is far better off than the 
other continents. For while Asia has but one mile of 



NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF EUROPE . 


coast to 533 square miles of surface, and Africa one 
to 420, Europe, with an area of 3,700,000 square 
miles, has 19,500 miles of coast, or one mile to every 
190 square miles of surface, and out of the whole 
19,500 not more than 3,000 are difficult of access. 
No natural circumstances more favourable to navi¬ 



gation and commerce can be imagined than the deeply 
indented coasts of Asia Minor, and the Grecian Archi¬ 
pelago—where European commerce first fixed itself 
—Italy with its double seaboard and its three great 
adjacent islands, or the equally irregular outline of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. Compare a coast like 
Greece (fig. 16) with that of Ceylon (fig. 17), which has 
few indentations, even if those few be important, and 
the inferiority of the latter to the former as a nurse of 
maritime life must be evident. 

84. The rivers of Europe, though far behind those of 
Asia for size, are far before them for convenience and 
advantage. Spain is deficient in navigable streams, 
and suffers in consequence, but the Danube, the 
Rhine, the Seine, the Loire, the Elbe, the Po, and 




58 


GEOGRAPHY. 



the Vistula, with their hundreds of branches, form 
splendid roads, up and down which commerce pours 
its tides between the heart of the continent and the 
ocean, and, beyond the ocean, the ports and rivers of 
other countries. The Russian rivers are worthy of 
consideration by themselves fur their great size, their 
navigableness, and the flatness of the country which 
they drain ; so gently swelling as to enable canals to 
be made between the rivers, by which boats can pass 
from the White Sea and the Baltic to the Caspian, the 
Black Sea, and thence to the Mediterranean. But 
pre-eminent above them all, in the true qualities of 
a useful civilising river, is the Thames, which, though 
smaller than any of those mentioned, surpasses every 
one for convenience and for the manner in which it is 
fitted to the requirements of commerce. 

















CLIMA TE. COMMERCE. 


59 


85. In climate Europe is equally fortunate. The 
line of permanent frost, or average temperature at 
freezing-point throughout the year, which includes a 
large part of Northern Asia, only touches Lapland 
and the north-east corner of Russia; while the 
line of 70° mean annual temperature sweeps just 
past its southern shores. It thus escapes both 
extremes. It has neither the long droughts nor the 
violent deluges of rain which afflict Asia and Africa, 
nor the typhoon winds and sudden cyclone waves 
which destroy so many thousands of people; every¬ 
thing is equable, steady, and beneficent. The ocean 
isolates it from the Polar regions, softens and equalises 
the temperature of its coasts; the Gulf Stream cherishes 
and moistens its western shores; while the great 
furnace of Africa is near enough to send its warmth 
across the Mediterranean to the countries opposite. 
Commerce —with all its evils, the grand instru¬ 
ment of civilisation in the world—if not European 
by birth is so by adoption. Here, as in its river, 
England is pre-eminent. What Europe is to Asia and 
Africa, Great Britain is to Europe. Trade, which 
began in Phoenicia, moved westward through the 
promontories and islands of Greece, through the 
lagoons of the Adriatic, and the creeks and harbours 
of the Riviera, through Spain and Holland, to arrive 
at last at our favoured isle ; where no day is too hot 
and no day too cold for work, where business is never 
interrupted by frozen rivers, or destructive floods, or 
tremendous tempests, or any other of those operations 
of nature which must seriously injure the commerce 
even of other European countries. 

86. Looked at in the light of their adaptation to 
man’s necessities, we see, therefore, that the ancient 

6 





6o 


GEOGRAPHY. 


division of the Old World into the three continents 
of Europe, Asia, and Africa was a natural, necessary, 
and reasonable one. 

87. And when we cross the ocean to the New 
World, which the ancients did not know, we find 
similar conditions leading to similar results. South 
America, as we have seen, has a splendid system 
of rivers ; its natural productions are of great luxuri¬ 
ance and value; its coast-line is 16,500 miles to 
6,800,000 square miles of surface—or 1 to 420 ; but 
it wants harbours, and the heat, the moisture, the 
inundation of the rivers, and the plague of insects 
and reptiles, prevent these advantages being enjoyed, 
and give it a population less in proportion to its size 
than even Persia or Arabia. 

88. The conditions of Australia are in many respects 
equally unfavourable. Lying, as it does, between S. lat. 
ii° and 39 0 , the heat even on the sea-coast is often 
overpowering; the rainfall is small, and scorching 
winds and long droughts are frequent, though the cli¬ 
mate is healthy. The mass of land is nearly as solid as 
that of Africa. The Gulf of Carpentaria is a fine inland 
sea; the harbours of Port Jackson and Port Philip are 
magnificent, and there are other inlets and estuaries, 
but a large part of the coast is very unsuited for navi¬ 
gation. The rivers are few, and with the exception of 
the Murray small and shallow. The Murray is 1,200 
miles long, and drains a basin of more than 200,000 
square miles—more than twice as much as England, 
Wales, and Scotland ; but its entrance is closed 
by a bar, it has only two affluents -of importance, 
and the other rivers are mostly mountain streams, 
rushing torrents in winter, and dry beds in summer, 
so that internal communication by those channels is 





AUSTRALIA. NORTH AMERICA. 


61 


impossible. A great part of the centre seems to be a 
depressed basin, and to consist of a sandy,-waterless, 
burning desert. And although this is being gradually 
encroached on, and may ultimately be reclaimed, it 
will be so by the energy of the British race working 
against great natural difficulties. 

89. It is in North America that we find the 
nearest approach to the favourable conditions of 
Europe, making it practically a separate continent 
from South America. Its area is 8,600,000 square 
miles, and its coast-line 24,500 miles long, so that it 
has a mile of shore to each 350 miles of surface. It 
is true that about 7,000 miles of the coast are within 
the Arctic circle, and therefore useless for navigation, 
and the western coast, on the Pacific, is not much 
indented; but the eastern side, from Newfoundland to 
Cape Hatteras, is full of inlets, bays, outlying islands, 
peninsulas, and harbours, admirably fit for shipping. 
The rivers of North America are the largest in the 
world. The Mississippi and Missouri spread their 
countless arms over a basin twelve times the size of 
Great Britain. Some of their branches are mighty 
rivers, and the two main streams are navigable for 
more than 4,500 miles from the sea. The St. Law¬ 
rence, the Hudson, Susquehanna, Delaware, Potomac, 
and James, are fine navigable rivers, with large cities 
on their banks or at their mouths. In climate North 
America is less happy than England. Owing to 
the size of the continent, and the consequent dis¬ 
tance of its interior from the sea, as well as its 
direct connection with the Arctic regions, the heat in 
summer and the cold in winter are greater than they 
are with us ; and the enormous scale of the rivers 
exposes them to floods and other drawbacks which 



62 


GEOGRAPHY 


would seriously interfere with commerce, but for the 
indomitable energy and activity of the people. 

THE OCEAN. 

90. So far for a general rough idea of the nature 
and position of the dry land of the world. About its 
various masses, round the peninsulas and headlands, 
into the bays and gulfs, and through the straits and 
passages, circulates the wide and ever-flowing ocean, 
filling up the deep hollows between the continents 
and islands, distributing warmth and life throughout, 
and affording a ready means of communication all 
over the world. 

91. I have already said that it is estimated to 
cover 145 millions of square miles, about three 
times the surface of the land. This great body of 
water is one and undivided. True, Africa, South 
America, and Australia do, as we have seen, pro¬ 
ject down towards the South Pole, and hinder the 
waves from flowing straight on from east to west 
or west to east, but the waves make their way round 
these obstacles, and every particle of the surface 
water probably visits in turn every part of the ocean, 
and every nook and corner of the shore. Through 
Behring’s Strait and Baffin’s Bay and the seas of 
Greenland and Kara, currents are constantly running 
to interchange the warm water of the Equator with 
the cold water of the Poles. Even in such enclosed 
places as the Baltic, the Red Sea, and the Mediter¬ 
ranean, there is always a current running in and 
another current running out. 

92. But though all one great body of water, the 
sea naturally divides itself on the map into five main 



THE ATLANTIC. 


&3 


portions—the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the 
Arctic, and the Antarctic Oceans. 

93. The Atlantic is the one which most nearly 
concerns us. It forms the channel between Europe 
and Africa on the one hand, and America on the other. 
In general form it is long and winding, the coasts 
on one side curiously answering in outline to those 
on the other. From north to south, from Iceland to 
Cape Horn, it is 8,000 miles long. Its northern 
portion, say between Lisbon and New York, is 3,400 
miles wide. Between Sierra Leone on the coast of 
Africa and the opposite shoulder of South America 
it narrows to less than 1,800, and then widens south¬ 
ward, until from the Cape of Good Hope to Monte 
Video it is 4,300 miles. 

94. Now there are two things which in the main 
give an ocean importance in the world, and an ad¬ 
vantage over another ocean, and these two are length 
of coast-line and extent of basin, that is of rivers 
which run into it (see § 200) ; both add to its com¬ 
merce, to the number of ships which sail upon it, and 
of people who live by it; and both of these the Atlantic 
has got to a far larger extent than either of the other 
oceans. In addition to the long smooth shores of 
Western Africa and Eastern South America, all the in¬ 
dentations and windings of the North American coast, 
the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, the bays and 
inlets along the shores of the United States, Nova 
Scotia, Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, all 
immensely increase the length of the coast, and the 
opportunity for shipping; even Hudson’s Bay and 
Strait may possibly be some day or other full of 
inhabitants. In Europe the coasts which lie open 
to the Atlantic are themselves indented and winding 



6 4 


GEOGRAPHY. 


enough, and full of harbours, refuges, and estuaries; 
but add to these the extra recesses, hidden, as it were, 
in the background, of the Mediterranean, Adriatic, 
and Black Sea, the Baltic, Gulf of Finland, and Gulf 
of Bothnia, and you more than double the length. 
The coast-line of the Atlantic on the whole is calcu¬ 
lated at about 55,000 English miles. 

95. Closely connected with this is the area of its 
basin. Owing to the Andes and Rocky mountains 
being set back so close to the Pacific, all the large 
rivers of South America and the greater part of those 
of North America run westward into the Atlantic, 
which thus gets the lion’s share of the supply. In fact 
it takes the water of six-sevenths of the whole of 
America. From Europe, chiefly through the Baltic 
and Mediterranean, it has the water of every river 
except the Volga, and the Mediterranean enables it 
to get the Nile from Africa, in addition to the Niger, 
the Gambia, and other large rivers outside on the 
coast. The amount of land drained by all these rivers 
on both sides of the Atlantic is estimated at 19 millions 
of square miles, 2^ times as much as supplies the 
Pacific, though the Pacific itself is much larger than 
the Atlantic. And when we recollect the countless 
myriads of people who exist on a large part of these 
19 millions of square miles—the leading nations of 
the world, whose welfare and occupations are all 
more or less closely connected with the great Atlantic 
and dependent on it, whose lives are bound up with 
the freight of its vessels and the letters of its mails— 
we shall begin to realise how mighty a part a great 
ocean may play in the world, and how “ rivers ” and 
“ drainage ” and “ coast-lines ” and “ basins ” can 
make one ocean more important than another. 



THE PACIFIC. 


65 

96. The Pacific differs from the Atlantic in almost 
every respect, except that it is an ocean. It differs in 
shape, in area, in extent of basin, in the number 
and character of its islands. In shape it is a vast 
field of waters. Instead of the free open look of the 
Atlantic, the highway of the world, we find an enor¬ 
mous bay, closed at the top, except by the narrow inlet 
of Behring’s Strait, and barred across a large portion 
of its width by a confused crowd of islands. Its coasts 
are formed by the long mountain-line of America on 
the east, and the archipelago of Australasia and Japan 
on the west. From North to South—the Aleutian 
islands to Cape Horn—it is 7,000 miles; while its 
width at the Equator is of the enormous length of 
more than 10,000. Its area is estimated at more 
than 67 millions of square miles—more than that 
of all the dry land of the earth put together. And 
yet, though its area is so large, its basin is computed at 
not half that of the Atlantic. On the American coast 
few important rivers feed it, and the basin is hemmed in 
by the Rocky mountains and Andes. On the Asiatic 
side it is more fortunate, as it receives the Amoor, and 
the great rivers of China, Cambodia, and Malacca. 
It is surrounded by volcanoes—those of America on 
the east, of the Sunda and Philippines on the west, 
the Kuriles and Aleutian islands on the north, and 
of the Sandwich, Marquesas, and Society islands in its 
bosom. Of the 250 active volcanoes enumerated by 
Humboldt, 226 are in and around this ocean. Another 
remarkable feature consists in its coral islands and 
reefs, of which there are vast numbers of all sizes, 
extending over more than 100 degrees of longitude 
and rising from enormous depths. 

97. Third in the list is the Indian Ocean, 






66 


GEOGRAPHY. 


separated from the Pacific by Australia and the Asiatic 
Archipelago, and from the Atlantic by Africa,' and 
smaller than either of the preceding. It is truly a 
double bay of very large size, which forces its way up 
into the land by the two lesser bays of Arabia and 
Bengal, and still further by the long narrow inlets of 
the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Indian Ocean 
is estimated to cover 29 millions of miles. Its basin is 
very important, being nothing less than the whole of 
India and Burmah, including, among many others, the 
four great rivers, Indus, Ganges, Brahmapootra, and 
Ira wady, which alone discharge the waters of a million 
and a quarter of square miles into it, as well as the 
Tigris and Euphrates from Armenia, and the Zambesi 
from Africa. This ocean also contains coral reefs and 
islands, though not nearly so many as the Pacific does. 
Its most striking feature lies in its periodical winds, 
called monsoons, which take the place of the trade- 
winds of the Atlantic and Pacific, are vital to the 
navigation, and have a great effect on the climate of 
India. It is also much exposed to tornadoes or 
sudden tempests of the most furious and destructive 
kind, as at Midnapore, in 1874, when 3,000 people 
died from the buffeting of the wind alone; and to 
cyclone waves like that of October 31st, 1876, at 
Backergunge, when 215,000 persons perished in an 
hour. 

9S. North and south of the three main oceans 
lie the Arctic and Antarctic portions or seas. Of the 
two the Arctic is the best known, partly because 
it is nearer home, partly because it is more accessible. 
Here, as often elsewhere, commerce led the way. 
North-Polar exploration began from the early en¬ 
deavour to find a “ North-west Passage ” for the 



ARCTIC OCEAN. 


67 


Indian trade. Greenland, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen. 
and the north coasts of Siberia and of North America, 
which surround the North Pole, have been to a great 
extent explored and mapped as far north as latitude 
83° 20' 27". There are even inhabitants up to 8i°; 
the summer, though short, is warm, and vegetation 
and animals feeding on it have been found as far 
as 83°. The Arctic Expedition of 1875 killed musk¬ 
oxen, hares, and ptarmigan, in latitude 82\ The ice¬ 
bergs, which during the warmer months move down 
from Baffin’s Bay, cling to the coast of Labrador and 
Newfoundland, and are rarely seen in the open ocean 
south of Halifax (lat. 44 0 39'), or farther east than 
40° W. longitude, and there are fast melting away from 
the influence of the Gulf Stream. Whereas in the 
south the icebergs advance across the whole ocean as 
far as 45 0 and even 40° S. latitude, and make navi¬ 
gation very hazardous beyond that line. They even 
drift as far as the Cape of Good Hope, a latitude 
equivalent to that of Gibraltar. In Chili glaciers 
come down to the sea at a latitude equal to that of 
Venice. On the few islands found in the Antarctic 
Sea, the vegetation is of the lowest forms, and the 
only animal life, birds and seals. The Antarctic 
continent surrounding the South Pole, has been esti¬ 
mated at twice the size of Europe. Portions of it 
have been seen at Victoria Land, with its two great 
volcanoes, Erebus and Terror—and at Graham and 
Enderby Land; but the great bulk of it is hidden 
behind an impenetrable wall of permanent ice. Even 
in summer the temperature of the air is never above 
the freezing-point, and the snow there never thaws. 

99. One main reason of this difference between 
the Arctic and Antarctic Seas lies in the currents 



68 


GEOGRAPHY. 


which exist in the ocean, and the greater circulation 
of warm water in the former of the two. It is 
hardly necessary to say that the sea is never still; 
but many may not be aware that the waves do not 
always move forward when they seem to do so, 
and that unless a current is running in the 
water, the waves only move up and down, and not 
forward, when the sea is agitated. But there are 
currents in the sea, running through it with definite 
breadth, just as if they were rivers; and there are 
the Tides, which are an essential part of the ocean; 
and there are also winds which blow constantly, or 
for certain seasons, in steady directions over it; and 
these must ail be understood if we wish to know about 
the sea. 

ioo. Of the winds, the chief are the trade-winds 
and the monsoons. The trade-winds are perennial, 
that is they blow during the entire year in one general 
direction, a regular steady wind from east to west. 
This they do in the Atlantic and the Pacific, from one 
year’s end to another, in a width or belt of about 
30 degrees on each side of the Equator. These 
winds are great helps to navigation, but before the 
invention of steamers they were all-important, and 
in fact got their name from the assistance they gave 
to trade. Every ship which sailed from Europe to 
the West Indies, the Brazils, India, or Peru, had to 
pass through “the Tradesand during some 50 or 60 
degrees of latitude was likely there to find a pretty 
steady wind to help it on its course. And the same 
for those who sailed between the West Coast of 
America and China or India. The trade-winds have 
left their mark on the map of the West Indies in the 
names of the “Windward islands” and “Leeward 



TRADE-WINDS. MONSOONS. CURRENTS. 69 


islands the former being those from Trinidad to 
Martinique, which directly meet the wind, and the 
latter those from Dominica to Porto Rico, which 
slope away from it. 

101. In the Indian Ocean also the wind blows from 
east to west from November to March ; but from 
April to October, owing perhaps to the heat accu¬ 
mulated on the mainland during the solstice, it turns 
round and blows from the south-west, and in so doing 
brings the rain on the coast of India. This is called 
in India the monsoon, and such an alternating or 
changing wind is called periodical. 

102. Connected with the winds are the ocean 
currents, which, though partly springing from other 
causes, are much influenced by their constant blowing. 
There are few parts of the ocean in which a current 
is not to be found running as fast as 10 miles a 
day, and sometimes much faster. The chief are the 
equatorial currents, which flow round the globe, 
or wherever the land will let them flow, in the 
same direction as the trade-winds—enormous rivers 
coursing through the ocean. In the Atlantic two of 
these great streams start from about Loanda on 
the coast of Africa, alongside of each other, though 
separated by a belt of smoother water. They run 
abreast for some distance, till the one below the 
Equator bends to the south, goes along down the 
coast of Brazil to the southern end of South America, 
and there turns to the eastward towards the Cape of 
Good Hope. 

103. The other, north of the Equator, is larger and 
more important; indeed to us it is nearly the most 
important thing in the world. It runs nearly due west, 
about 5 degrees or 350 miles wide, and at a pace of 




7o 


GEOGRAPHY. 


from 20 to 50 miles a day. It sweeps past the north 
coast of South America with such strength that not even 
the immense streams rushing out of the Amazons and 
Orinoco rivers are enough to turn it aside; passes 
through the Windward islands, across the Caribbean 
Sea, and into the Gulf of Mexico, an enormous ocean 
lake with only two outlets, hemmed in by mountains, 
and exposed to the full heat of the tropical sun. As 
the current sweeps round the Gulf it becomes very 
hot, and is swollen by the waters of the Mississippi, 
till at length it forces its way out into the Atlantic 
between Florida and Cuba in a stream of from 30 to 
40 miles wide and 600 or 700 feet deep, and at a 
pace of about 80 miles a day. The Thames at 
London Bridge is barely 900 feet wide, and the sea from 
Dover to Calais is 21 miles. These two dimensions 
will help you to understand what an immense body of 
water the Gulf Stream is. Its heat when it leaves the 
Gulf is from 75 0 to 85° Fahr. At first it keeps pretty 
close to the coast of America, but by degrees widens 
out and bears away to the east, running between 
Newfoundland and the Azores. There it parts; the 
main body turns round the Azores and goes off south¬ 
ward between those islands and Spain, down to the 
African coast. The other portion runs on northward 
between Great Britain and Iceland, bestowing warmth 
and moisture on Cornwall, Ireland, the Hebrides, and 
the Shetland islands, as it goes, and throwing forward 
a stream which bears the weeds and seeds of the 
New World as far as the coast of Norway and even 
Spitzbergen, and perhaps even the North Pole. 

104. This is the famous Gulf Stream, which is 
poured out of the Gulf of Mexico as out of a vast 
tank of hot water, to cherish and fertilise the shores of 




THE GULF STREAM. 


7i 


European and even Arctic countries, thousands of 
miles distant from its source. This it is which makes 
the astonishing difference in climate between our 
shores and those of North America in the same 
latitudes ; which enables myrtles, oleanders, and 
oranges to flourish in the open air on the coast of 
Cornwall, while Newfoundland in the same latitude 
is shut in with icebergs; gives us a beautiful verdant 
country like the Western Highlands in place of the 
iron-bound coast of Labrador; and causes the ex¬ 
traordinary’ fact that no polar ice has ever been known 
to visit the North Cape of Norway, in latitude 72 0 , the 
same latitude with Disco island, on the west coast of 
Greenland, which may be called the home of ice¬ 
bergs. But the northward motion of the Gulf Stream 
necessitates a southward motion from the Polar Seas. 
Immediately beneath the Gulf Stream, and on the 
inner or land side of it, runs a current of cold water 
from past Labrador, to replace the warm water brought 
up from the tropics ; and below that again is found 
a still colder stratum, which has probably travelled up 
the bed of the Atlantic from the Southern Pole. 
Such and so constant is the motion and interchange 
throughout the water of the sea. 

105. In the Pacific also there is a great equatorial 
current which starts from the Bay of Panama and runs 
right across the ocean, past the Caroline and Ladrone 
islands to the Philippines. There it is met by a cur¬ 
rent which issues from the China Sea much as the Gulf 
Stream does from the Gulf of Mexico, and the two 
then run outside of Japan, and round the northern 
limits of the Pacific, and so down again to California. 

106. In the Indian Ocean the main current starts 
from the Bay of Bengal, sweeps past Ceylon and the 




72 


GEOGRAPHY. 


Seychelles islands, and between Africa and Madagascar 
to the Cape of Good Hope. There it is suddenly 
checked, partly by the Agulhas Reef and partly by 
the sudden cold of the Southern Ocean, and turned 
back to the south-west towards Kerguelen island. 

107. There are many other currents besides those 
named, but these are the chief, and will give an idea 
of the ceaseless change going on in the ocean. 
For wherever water is moved away, other water must 
naturally come in to take its place.—And thus what I 
said before is true, that every particle of water probably 
visits in turn every part of the world. 

108. The sea is however stirred to its lowest depths 
twice every day by a movement of a different kind to 
those just spoken of. The currents are the earth’s 
own action. They are caused by the natural tendency 
of warm and cold water to change places, helped 
by the rotation of the earth, and by the force of 
winds blowing constantly one way on the surface. 
But the tides come entirely from outside—the earth 
herself has nothing to do with them, any more than 
she has with her spinning round the sun; and they 
move the ocean to its deepest recesses. 

109. They are the rise formed in the water of the sea 
by the attraction of the sun and moon, principally of 
the moon. The moon attracts all things on the earth, 
pulls them towards it; and water being fluid changes 
its shape as it is pulled, and rises up towards the 
moon in a large heap or wen. But as the earth is 
spinning round all the time, the water is carried 
on and will not rise quite in the same shape that 
it would if it were at rest, but gets spread out into a 
broad flat wave. This tidal-wave goes travelling along 
over the surface of the sea, following the moon, and 



THE TIDES. 


73 


always two or three hours behind it; and as it comes 
to the various places along the coast it forms high 
tide there. The moon raises a similar heap of 
water on the opposite side of the world at the same 
time ; so that there are always two tidal-waves going 
round at once, each half a day apart. The sun also 
attracts the water, though, from being so far off, much 
less than the moon does. When the two come in a 
line and pull together—that is at full moon and new 
moon—the tide is highest, and is called spring 
tide : when they are at right angles to one another 
—that is at the moon’s quarters—the tide is lowest, 
and is neap tide. 

no. This is the general principle of the tides,, 
but it is very much interfered with by the form of 
the coast, the depth of the sea, the friction of the 
water on itself and on the shore, the action of wind, 
the ocean currents, and many other things. The 
original height of the tide-wave—the heap of water 
raised by the moon — is from 3 to 4 feet, and 
that is the rise of the tide in the open ocean of 
the Pacific; but where there is a bay or inlet with 
high steep walls the water will force its way in, and 
rise much higher. In the Bristol Channel, which is 
like a funnel with its mouth turned outwards to the 
ocean, the tides are forced up as high as 30, and, at 
Chepstow, 50 feet; and in the Bay of Fundy, in 
Nova Scotia, to 70, 80, and even 100. On the coast 
of Jutland, in the German Ocean, owing to the tide- 
wave from the north meeting that from the south, 
round Great Britain, there is little or no variation, 
but perpetual high water. You will find all this 
explained at length in the Elementary Lessons iti 
Astronomy (§§659-667). I have mentioned it because 



74 


GEOGRAPHY. 


no account of the ocean can be complete without 
some description of the tides. 

hi. The surface of the ocean has been pretty well 
known for a long time, but the inside of it—its 
depths, the shape and nature of the bottom, the heat 
at various depths, how the deep currents run, and 
where the various layers of warm and cold water 
come from and go to—these have only been begun 
to be found out quite lately. The Americans took the 
lead. Captain Maury, of the U.S. navy, was the first 
investigator, and was followed by the U.S. surveying and 
sounding expeditions of the Tuscarora and the Gazelle. 
Among our own expeditions were those of the Bulldog , 
Porcupine , and Lightning, from i860 to 1870. But the 
last and greatest discoveries have been made in the 
Challenger man-of-war, of which Sir George Nares was 
commander (till he was sent to the North Pole in 
1875), and Sir VVyville Thomson chief of the scientific 
department. In the Atlantic, soundings enough 
have been taken to enable a general rough map of 
the bottom to be made, of which I have attempted 
to give you a view, as if the water were all away, 
and the dry bed could be seen. 

11 2. It shews the bed of the ocean from the 
Cape of Good Hope to Iceland to consist of a ridge 
running pretty nearly midway between America, 
Europe, and Africa, and following in a general way the 
winding of those continents. This ridge rises to within 
8,500 or 10,000 feet of the waves. On each side of 
it, west and east, there is a valley, which sinks in some 
places as far as 19,000, 21,000, and even 23,000 feet 
below the waves. Of the two valleys, the eastern one 
passes east of the Azores, and round the outside of 
Ireland. Off Newfoundland the western valley parts : 




Fig. 18. 


Lft 





































76 


GEOGRAPHY. 


one fork leads into Davis’s Strait, the other runs on to 
Iceland. The three deepest spots known are south¬ 
east of Bermuda, off Porto Rico, and midway between 
South America and South Africa. South of S. lat. 30 
the depths are comparatively moderate, not greater 
than 16,000 and 17,000 feet, and rarely as great. 

113. Although the general level of the ridge is 8,000 
or 10,000 feet below the waves, yet here and there 
it rises far above them. The Azores, Ascension, and 
St. Helena, are peaks of this ridge, and tower 
above the adjoining valleys to a height of more than 
20,000 feet. The Cape de Verde islands, the 
Canaries, and Madeira stand on plateaus of their 
own, outliers of Africa. Bermuda is also off the ridge, 
and curiously isolated, being a mountain of 15,000 
feet high, with a base over 100 miles wide, standing 
on ground which seems to fall away on each side, and 
to have no other high land in sight, nearer than the 
American coast, 600 miles off. 

114. To get some idea of the general nature of the 
ocean bed let us take the lowest levels of the valleys 
just named as a starting-point—equivalent to the 
“level of the sea” from which the heights of mountains 
on dry land are calculated. We shall find that the 
Peak of Teneriffe, which rises 12,180 feet above the 
ocean, if the sea were dry would really stand up 
34,900 feet above the bottom; while in the Azores and 
Cape de Verde islands there are several peaks that 
would soar to 28,000 and 30,000 feet above the 
ocean bed. None of these would seem to have any 
sudden rise, indeed their slopes appear to be gentler 
than those of the European mountains. 

115. We may further obtain a comparative idea of 
the height of the submarine mountains of the Atlantic 



BED OF THE OCEAN. 


77 


by supposing that Europe and Asia were covered by 
the ocean to a depth of 23,000 feet above tne lowest 
ground, that being the greatest depth yet obtained by 
sounding. In this case not a vestige of land would be 
seen in Europe. The summit of Mont Blanc would 
be buried 5,000 feet below the surface, and the highest 
of the Pyrenees more than 11,000. Ararat would be 
nowhere ; and the first land which would meet the view 
would be the group of islets formed by 16 or 18 of the 
highest mountains in the Himalayas and Tibet as they 
rose above the waves, some just emerging and others 
reaching a height of about 7,000 feet. 

116. The Pacific has been less extensively sounded 
than the Atlantic, but some extraordinary depths have 
been discovered there. One is among the Ladrone 
islands, of 27,450 feet; another off the Kurile islands, 
of 27,930 feet; and a third outside the centre island 
of Japan, where 27,858 feet of line was let out with¬ 
out finding bottom. Fusi-yama in Japan is 14,177 
feet above the water, so that the total height of its 
snowy cap from the bed of the sea must be at least 
42,100 feet, or 8 miles; that is, 2]^ miles higher 
than the highest of the Himalayas above the ocean 
level. 

117. On the heat of the ocean a great deal has 
been revealed by the Challengeds expedition, and the 
general result, exclusive of such special features as the 
Gulf Stream, may be summed up as follows. In all 
three oceans, within the Torrid and Temperate Zones, 
the bottom of the sea is covered, as a rule, with a stratum 
2,000 to 3,000 feet thick of cold water, varying from 
freezing-point to 3 degrees above it (32° to 358 
Fahr.). In the Pacific this stratum lies at about 9,000 
feet below the surface, and there is a line, at 2,500 or 




78 


GEOGRAPHY. 


3,000 feet from the surface, below which the water is 
almost uniformly 40°. Both in the Pacific and Indian 
Oceans it appears to be proved that this cold bottom 
stratum comes from the Antarctic Pole. And even in 
the Atlantic, so much more open to the north than 
either of the others, the Antarctic water forces its way 
along the ground beyond the Equator. North of the 
Equator the bed of the central Atlantic becomes slightly 
warmer, but it is not till the north of Scotland is passed 
that the bottom cold stratum appears to be supplied 
from the North Pole. The heat of the surface varies 
with the latitude and the time of year. In the enclosed 
sea of the Indian Archipelago, in January, February, 
and March, 1875, it varied from 75 0 to 84° Fahr., with 
an average of 817°. 

118. At the depth of 12 or 14,000 feet the bottom 
of the Temperate and Torrid Zones appears to be 
generally covered with mud consisting of the shells 
or skeletons of very small creatures {globigerina), 
similar to those by which the chalk of our cliffs and 
downs has been formed. In the deeper valleys the 
bottom is a red clay with no remains of organisms. 
In the Polar regions the mud of the bottom appears 
to be pure flint. 

119. Now this immense addition to our scientific 
knowledge, to what is it due ? To Commerce. It is 
Commerce which has called in Science and given it 
this splendid opportunity of enriching itself. For the 
depths of the ocean would never have been sounded 
as they have been, and so many valuable and pregnant 
facts extracted from them, if it had not been necessary 
for business purposes to find the best line across the 
bottom for the Atlantic electric cable. So let no one 
depreciate commerce, or call it ignoble or sordid ! 



THE SALT WATER. 


79 


120. The water in the sea is salt throughout. It 
is rather heavier than fresh water, its specific gravity 
being i - o 26; that is to say, a gallon of sea water 
instead of weighing io lb. as a gallon of fresh water 
does, would weigh io '26 or a trifle over \o]/^ lb. In 
the Baltic, where so many rivers flow in, and about 
the Equator where there is so much rain, it is much 
less salt, and therefore lighter. In the Mediterranean, 
on the other hand, where a great deal of evaporation 
goes on, and the sea is enclosed, it becomes salter and 
heavier. The rivers and streams are always at work 
wearing down the land, and carrying the fragments of 
its mountains and continents into the sea; and the sea 
in like manner is always employed in washing over and 
over the materials thus brought into it. And as this 
has been going on for millions of years, the sea water 
must contain all the substances which once formed those 
materials and can be dissolved in cold water—in other 
words, every soluble substance in nature. This is why 
the sea is salt. The chief ingredient in it is common 
salt, and salts of magnesia and lime are also plentiful. 
A very small trace of silver is also found, and it gives 
a startling idea of the vastness of the ocean to know 
that this minute, hardly perceptible quantity, if it could 
be all collected, would yield two million tons of that 
metal, equal in value to ^13,440,000,000, seventeen 
times the National Debt. 

FEATURES OF THE EARTH. 

121. I have now done my best to give you a general 
idea of the shape, situation, and character of the 
dry land of the earth, and of the most striking 
peculiarities of the ocean. We will end by going 
through what may be called the principal features of 



8o 


GEOGRAPHY. 


the face of the earth, its mountains and rivers, capes, 
isthmuses, promontories, and other portions of its 
surface, and seeing what hints we can gain from such 
an examination of them. 

122. A continent is the mainland of the world, as 
distinguished from islands which though large are still 
evidently surrounded by the sea. Australia, though 
an island, is so much larger than other islands, that it 
too is called a continent. Indeed, it is within one 
seventh part as large as Europe itself.—Living as we 
do in an island, we often speak of the mainland of 
Europe as “ the continent,” and of “ continental trade,” 
“ continental customs,” a “ continental tour,” &c. 

123. Strictly speaking the whole of the Old World 
is one continent. Africa is cut off from Asia by the 
Red Sea and the Suez Canal, though the interval is a 
very narrow one, but the division between Europe and 
Asia is purely artificial. Nevertheless, the distinction 
between the continents has been so long recognised, 
and is grounded on so real a difference in the nature 
of the three, that Europe, Asia, Africa, and America 
will probably be called the four quarters of the 
globe as long as the world lasts. (§86.) 

124. The word continental is sometimes applied 
to the drainage of the high central district of Asia, 
and other regions in America which are shut out from 
the ocean, and “ contain ” their own drainage, the 
rivers running not into the sea but into inland lakes. 

(§ 74 -) 

125. Island, land surrounded by water—set in 
the water, as the eye is set in the face. The word is 
not from isle, but from *ey, as in Anglesey, Selsey, 


* Ey = island. The spelling ea , as in Anglesea, Chelsea, Portsea, is wrong. 




ISLANDS. 


81 


Orkney; or oe, as in Faroe ; and we still use it in 
eyot or ait for the island near Chiswick and other 
islands in the Thames. The world has been some¬ 
times said to consist of two large islands, Europe, 
Asia, and Africa in one, and America in the other, 
as each is completely surrounded by water ; but these 
large masses of land are always called continents. So 
is Australia. The largest island is Borneo, and the 
next New Guinea. Great Britain ranks seventh in* 
the scale. One of the smallest inhabited ones is 
perhaps Heligoland, which, though but a third of 
the size of Hyde Park, and boasting only a single tree, 
contains 2,800 inhabitants. 

126. Islands are the tops of mountains rising from 
the bottom of the sea, in many cases very high moun¬ 
tains. Bermuda rises from a depth of 15,000 feet, with 
no other known eminence on either side nearer than 
600 miles, much as if Mont Blanc were planted quite 
alone in the middle of Russia. The Antilles, or 
small islands of the West Indies, rise from ground 
which in many places is from 15,000 to 20,000 feet 
below the water, and as they stand from 3,000 to 
6,000 feet above it must represent a truly magnifi¬ 
cent chain of mountains. The Azores are a group 
of from 10,000 to 16,000 feet high, standing upon a 
plateau of about 700 miles in diameter, itself rising to 
a height of more than 6,000 feet above the general 
level of the ocean bed. This would make the height 
of the Pico (which is 7,613 feet above the ocean) 
fully 22,000 feet in all above the great valley of the 
Atlantic bed, and the others in proportion. 

127. The Canaries would form a splendid outpost to 
Africa. If the sea were to retire, the three islands of 
Teneriffe, Palma, and the Gran Canaria would appear 



82 


GEOGRAPHY. 


as peaks towering to the heights of 23,000, 19,000, 
and 18,000 feet above their bases. In the Pacific thq 
Ladrone islands appear to rise suddenly to a height 
above the ocean bed of between 27 and 28,000 feet : 
while Japan and the Kurile islands to the N.E. of it 
must be even yet more lofty. 

128. The great islands of Borneo, New Guinea, 
and others which lie between Australia and Asia were 
%probably at one time a continuous continent, lying 

to the south of Asia, much as South America does 
with respect to North America. 

129. The coral islands, with few exceptions, are 
only to be found between latitudes 30° N. and 30° S. 
of the Equator, and oftenest in the Pacific Ocean; 
they appear to be formed on the tops of submarine 
eminences, which are gradually sinking with the bed 
of the sea. This opinion (Mr. Darwin’s) is grounded 
on the fact that the creatures which make the coral 
can only work between the surface and a certain depth 
(90 to 150 feet); and as the coral goes down much be¬ 
yond that depth, it is inferred that the islands have 
been gradually sinking so as to allow the animals to 
keep adding to the top, as they are still doing. The 
coral usually forms a round ring from one to thirty 
miles diameter, and a quarter of a mile or so in width, 
enclosing a lagoon of water with one doorway to the 
ocean, on the leeward side. On the ring earth 
gradually collects, and palm-trees grow. Outside, all 
is noise and fury, the waves of the ocean breaking on 
the coral in tremendous surf; inside, the water is 
perfectly still and clear. These islands are called 
“ atolls.” 

130. When coral comes near the surface, but not 




ARCHIPELAGO. CAPE. 


83 

above, it is called a reef. The largest of these is the 
Great Barrier reef, off Queensland, on the N.E. coast 
of Australia, a natural breakwater 1,000 miles long, 
which protects the coast from a terrible sea, and 
leaves a calm still channel for ships within it. 

131. Archipelago is a word used for a collection 
of islands, at first for those in the ^Egean Sea, between 
Greece and Asia Minor, and afterwards for various 
other groups, such as the Malay Archipelago, Borneo, 
Java, Sumatra, and the rest; the Low or Dangerous 
Archipelago in the South Pacific, and the Chagos 
Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. In the two last 
cases the groups consist partly of reefs and half- 
formed islands. 

132. Cape —that is, head—apart of the coast run¬ 
ning out into the sea, usually a bold headland, the 
end of a mountain, sometimes called a promontory. 
Such, though not called capes, are Beachy Head, 
Flamborough Head, and St. David’s Head ; and such, 
but much larger, is the Cape of Good Hope, which 
is the end of the high plateau of South Africa. Other 
famous capes are Cape Farewell, at the south point 
of Greenland; North Cape (an island), the extreme 
north of Europe ; Cape de Verde, the west cape of 
Africa; St. Vincent, on the coast of Portugal; Finis- 
terre, and Trafalgar, on that of Spain. Cape Horn, 
the southern extremity of South America, is an island, 
one of the group off the mainland which forms the 
Tierra del Fuego. 

133. Where the point of land is low, it is often 
called ness —that is, a nose; as Dungeness, which 
contrasts well with Beachy Head ; and on the low 
coasts of Kent, Essex, and Suffolk we find Sheerness, 

8 





8 4 


GEOGRAPHY. 


Shoeburyness, Foulness, and Orfordness, and even 
The Naze. The name came from the Danes or the 
Northmen. It is found on the coast of Norway, 
and on that of Scotland, which they frequented, as 
?iaes or noss ; also at Grisnez, opposite Dungeness. 
On the south coast of England the word bill is 
similarly used, as Selsey Bill, Portland Bill. Other 
words used for headlands in Scotland are mull and 
butt. 

134. Mountains are the largest eminences of a 
country, and hills the smaller ones—as we say the 
“ Welsh mountains,” and the “ Surrey hills.” But this 
distinction is not always kept up. The “ Mount of 
Olives ” is a moderate-sized hill, and the “ Neilgherry 
Hills” are mountains more than 8,000 feet high. In 
India, again, the “ Hill States ” are territories high up 
in the northern mountains, and “ going to the hills ” 
means migrating for the hot season to Simla or Murree, 
which lie thousands of feet up on the spurs of the 
Himalayas. Sometimes, too, a collection of moun¬ 
tains is called a “ mount,” as Mount Lebanon, which 
is really a range 50 miles long and, in some places, 
12,000 feet high. 

135. Mountains may be single and independent, like 
Etna or Vesuvius, and then they are generally vol¬ 
canoes. Or they may be connected in one long 
range, or chain, or cordillera , like the Pyrenees, or the 
Apennines, and the Caucasus; or in a double chain 
of two parallel main ridges, or even more, each 
perhaps a hundred miles apart, with great valleys 
and table-lands and smaller mountains between 
them, like the Northern Andes and the Rocky 
mountains, between the ranges of which lie great 
countries like Mexico, and Peru, and Oregon; or 



MOUNTAINS . 


S5 



like the Himalayas and Kuen-luns, which are 600 
miles from each other, and have between them the 
whole region of Tibet. Or they may be collected 



together with no very obvious arrangement; like the 
Alps, which include the groups of the Oberland, Mont 
Blanc, Monte Rosa, the Grisons, and the Tyrol. 

136. The highest mountains in the world are the 
Himalayas, where there are four peaks rising to 
29,002, 28,265, 28,156, and 26,826 feet, and many 
others nearly as high. In the Andes there are seven 
mountains which vary from 25,250 to 15,931 feet. 
Mont Blanc is 15,784; Ben Nevis, 4,406 ; Snowdon, 
3,590 feet. It must be remembered that these heights 
are all measured above the sea; whereas the moun 
tains are often planted inland, on considerably higher 
ground; for instance, the height of the valley of Cha- 
mouni, at the foot of Mont Blanc, is 3,500 feet, which 
thus takes nearly three-quarters of a mile off the 
nominal height of the mountain. But, as we said 









86 


GEOGRAPHY. 


before, even at the best how small are such heights 
when compared with the earth’s diameter. They are 
no more than the heads of the nails which fasten 
the lead to the dome of St. Paul’s ; and if you were 
on the moon looking at the earth, they would make 
no difference whatever in the roundness of the globe. 

137. The appearance of a mountain is often decep¬ 

tive. The height and slope appear greater than 
they are ; the rise of the mountain is full in view, and 
your own height gives you a vertical measure of it, 
whereas you have no means of estimating the distance 
of the slope from you, or the rate at which it slants 
away, and is lost in the distance. Few mountains rise 
at a steeper angle than 45 0 , and most are much less. 
The Peak of Tenerifife, which, from the harbour, seems 
to be almost over your head, is said to slope only 
at an angle of 12 0 30'. (§67.) You read in books of 

“ vertical heights,” and of mountains “ overhanging ” 
a town or a valley. These words may convey the 
appearance of the spot correctly, and the effect on the 
mind of the writer; but they are quite inaccurate 
as to fact. The mountains round Innspruck, when 
viewed from the town itself, seem almost to overhang 
the streets, and enclose it like the sides of a deep cup; 
but they are really many miles distant, and their 
slope is but gradual. 

138. The crest or ridge of a mountain is the 
general line of its range, above which the principal 
peaks project. Thus the general or mean height of 
the Pyrenees is about 8,000 feet, though some of its 
summits rise to more than 11,000. Sierra —a saw— 
is a word which the Spaniards apply to a range of 
mountains, such as the Sierra Nevada, the Sierra 
Sagra, &c., in Spain, Mexico, and South America. 



PASSES. 


87 


139- Passes are notches in the crest of a moun¬ 
tain by which it is easiest to cross from one side to the 
other; the roads of the Stelvio, Simplon, and Splugen, 
by which we cross the Alps between Switzerland and 
Italy, are examples. Other passes are too precipitous 
for carriage or horse, and must be crossed on foot; 
such are the S. Theodule, Col de Geant, &c. The 
Khyber and Bolan passes, between Hindostan and 
Afghanistan, were the scenes of some of the great 
disasters of our army in 1841-42. Some of the passes 
in the Himalayas by which the merchants go from 
India to Kashgar, Ladak, or Tibet, are as much as 
18,000 feet high above the sea; that is they have 
to climb that height, before they can find a gap allow¬ 
ing them to cross from the south to the north side of 
the mountains. 

140. The heat of the air becomes less as we ascend 
a mountain, and at last it grows so cold that the snow 
remains there always. The height at which this takes 
place varies with the part of the earth we are in, 
and with other things ; as, for instance, whether the 
mountain faces south or north, whether it is steep or 
not, whether it is exposed to cold winds or warm 
winds. In the Andes, between the tropics, the 
snow-line varies from 15,000 to 20,000 feet above 
the sea, according to circumstances. On the Hima¬ 
layas it is 15,500 feet on the south side and 16,600 
on the north side ; on Mont Blanc it is 8,500 feet. 
Warm winds contain a great deal of moisture, and 
when such a wind blows on to a cold mountain it drops 
its moisture; in other words rain falls. And this is the 
reason why there is so much rain in mountainous 
districts. The heaviest annual rainfall in the world 
is in the Khasia hills, behind the Bay of Bengal, 




88 


GEOGRAPHY. 


where the hot damp winds from the Indian Ocean 
meet a cooler atmosphere, and drop not less than 
50 feet deep of water in the twelve months. In the 
Cumberland mountains the rainfall is from 15 to 
18 feet annually, while away from the mountains on 
the same coast it is only from 2 feet 6 inches to 4 feet. 
Sometimes mountains intercept the whole of the rain, 
as the Andes do. An immense quantity falls on their 
eastern or Atlantic side, while on the coast between 
the Andes and the Pacific it is very seldom seen. In 
the district between the Rocky mountains and the 
Cascade mountains, the former intercept the rain 
from the Atlantic, and the latter that from the Pacific, 
and the land receives none. 

141. By thus intercepting the moisture of the air 
mountains cause great differences in the climate of 
places on opposite sides of them. Thus with the 
Dovrefeld, the great mountain range of Norway, on 
the west or seaward side the difference between the 
temperatures of summer and winter is only 18 0 , while 
on the other side of the range, by the Gulf of Bothnia, 
the difference is 42 0 ; the summer being much hotter, 
the winter much colder. 

142. If the mountains are'not covered with perpetual 
snow, the rain that falls and does not sink into the 
ground runs off in torrents and streams and water¬ 
falls. If they are colder it falls as snow, and then 
forms glaciers, which may be described as rivers 
of ice, filling the upper valleys many hundred feet 
deep, and slowly forcing their way down into the 
lower parts. As they get lower, into the warmer 
air, the glaciers melt, and from the lower end— 
sometimes called the “ toe ”—a river will flow away, 
as the Arve does from the lower end of the Mer de 



MOUNTAINS. GLACIERS. 


89 


Glace, or the Rhone from the glacier below the 
Furca. Thus glaciers so far perform the same office 
as lakes (§ 192) ; they receive the sudden masses 
of snow, store them up, and release them gradually 
in the form of streams, always flowing to refresh and 
fertilise the valleys below, and to delight the eye by 
the continual contrast of the verdure beneath with the 
rocks and snow above. 

143. We in Europe can form little idea of what a 
frightful calamity the want of mountains and streams 
is. Australia will probably suffer from it to the end 
of time. Had that great continent been divided by a 
range of mountains, sufficiently lofty to have had per¬ 
petual snow, and thus to intercept the hot winds and 
rob them of their moisture, it would have been one 
of the richest countries in the world; and its interior, 
instead of being, as much of it is, a wilderness of 
countless sand ridges, itself devoured by scorching 
winds, and the source of drought and oppression to 
the settlements on the coast, would have been one 
giant field of corn and pasture. 

144. But from whatever source it started, the river 
carries away sand and stones, which the rain or the 
glacier have soaked or scraped off the mountain ; and 
thus the circle of nature goes on. I he mountain causes 
the clouds to drop their rain : the rain wears away the 
mountain and hurries down its sides, gradually raising 
the lowlands with what it brings down, and carrying 
the remainder into the ocean, from whence, while the 
sand goes into the depths to form new rocks, the 
water rises again in vapour, to repeat, over and over 
again, the same process of destruction and supply. 

145. Mountains have played a great part in the 
history of many countries by affording a refuge for the 



So 


GEOGRAPHY. 


people when the lowlands were conquered, and pre¬ 
serving for long the names, manners, and customs of the 
first inhabitants of the country. The Peak of Derbyshire, 
and the Cumberland mountains, contain more names 
in the Celtic or old British dialect than the lowland 
districts round them do ; Wales and the Highlands of 
Scotland are still inhabited by the old British peoples 
whom the English could not drive out as they did 
those of the flatter parts of Britain. In Switzerland, 
the Caucasus, and Southern India, the mountains are 
still the abode of the primeval races—and the same 
elsewhere. There, far away from cities and com¬ 
munication with the rest of the world, they preserve 
the simple virtues of primeval life, though they also 
preserve its ignorance and prejudice. In Kaferistan, 
a very inaccessible mountain-region of Central Asia, on 
the southern slopes of the Hindoo Koosh, all attempts 
at intercourse with the ancient people have been un¬ 
successful, so that, though a large and prosperous 
nation, their numbers, language, and creed remain to 
this day unknown. 

146. This has occasionally been reversed, as in the 
conquest of Palestine, where the Jews took possession 
of the heights, and left the plains to the Canaanites; 
and in some parts of Italy to the present day the villages 
adhere to the mountain side, and for the same reason, 
namely, that the plains were the resort of robbers and 
plunderers, from whom safety was only to be found 
in the hills. Both cases shew the influence which 
mountains have had on the life of the nations who 
dwell among them. 

147. Nor should we forget the protection which a 
chain of mountains affords to those who dwell behind 
them. But for the Alps, Italy would no doubt have been 



MOUNTAINS AND THEIR NAMES . 


91 


overrun by the northern barbarians centuries sooner 
than it was ; Napoleon could not have invaded it but 
for the road across the Great St. Bernard, and the 
fact of his making the Simplon road afterwards, at an 
immense cost, proves how great an obstacle he felt the 
mountains to be to his movements. Thus mountains, 
and not rivers, are the usual boundaries of different 
countries. The Cheviots form more than two-thirds 
of the barrier between England and Scotland. The 
Franco-German war of 1870 showed that the Vosges 
mountains, and not the Rhine, were the real division 
between France and Germany. The Pyrenees and Alps 
are obvious instances of the same thing. 

148. In many cases mountains take their names 
from the snow on their tops. Himalaya is the “abode 
of snow;” Dwajalagiri is “the white mountain;” 
Lebanon the same; Apennines means “ the white 
head ;” Caucasus is “white with snow.” Mont Blanc, 
the Sierra Nevada, the Weisshorn, the Snafell in 
Iceland, the Sneehattan in Norway, are all names 
derived from the snow. But this is not always 
the case, even where we should most expect it. 
Andes means “copper;” Fusi-yama, the snow-capt 
mountain of Japan, is “ the mountain of the rich 
men ;” Pyrenees is “ high ;” Aghir-dagh (Ararat) is the 
“huge mountain.” Ural is a “belt or girdle;” Alp 
is probably a height; Hecla, “a cloak,” is so called 
from the smoke which hangs over it; Table mountain 
from its flat shape ; Etna means a furnace in 
Phcenician, but it is now usually called Mon-gibello— 
“ mountain-mountain,” or “ the mountain ”—by the 
peasants of Sicily. 

149. Other mountains are called after their dis¬ 
coverers or explorers, or other eminent persons, 




92 


GEOGRAPHY. 


as the Owen Stanley range in New Guinea; Mount 
Everest, and Webb’s Peaks in the Himalayas; Mount 
Murchison, and Fremont Peak, in the Rocky moun¬ 
tains. The great volcanoes in South Victoria Land 
are called Erebus and Terror, after the two ships of 
Captain James Ross who discovered them. Some 
great mountains seem destined to be known for ever 
by a mere surveyor’s number. The second loftiest 
peak in the Himalayas appears in the map as “ K 2.” 

150. In speaking of a mountain it is curious to 
notice how it is treated as a person. Mont Blanc 
has been called the “ monarch of mountains ; ” the 
Jungfrau means the “ virgin in Cumberland we have 
‘‘the Old Man,” which answers exactly to Jebel-esh- 
Sheikh, the modern name for Mount Hermon. And 
not only so, but the names for the different parts of a 
mountain are mostly taken from the human body, such 
as the head, crown, shoulder, breast, gorge (i.e. throat), 
side, back, flanks, foot, instep, and heel, and in French 
col (neck), for a pass. We even speak of the “ saddle” 
and the “ spurs,” and when a line of mountains runs 
from end to end of an island, as the Blue mountains in 
Jamaica, they are appropriately named its “ backbone.” 

1 5 1. I have mentioned volcanoes or burning 
mountains. There is great difference of opinion as 
to their number. Some say that there are 400 in all, 
others that there are no less than 900 in the islands of 
the West Pacific alone. Many of them seem to have 
altogether ceased to burn, but others are in constant 
eruption. A volcano is a hole going down below the 
surface and through the crust of the earth, up which 
melted lava or red-hot cinders and dust are blown 
from underneath. The quantity thus thrown out is 
sometimes almost beyond belief. At Tomboro, a 



BURNING MOUNTAINS. 


93 


burning mountain in Sumbavva, in 1815, cinders and 
dust enough were thrown out to form three moun¬ 
tains equal to Mont Blanc, or to cover the whole 
of England and Scotland to a depth of 7 feet. In 
1783, lava was forced out of a volcano in Iceland, 
equal to 21 cubic miles. In 1835 there was an erup¬ 
tion in Mexico, the ashes of which covered the ground 
for more than 20 miles round the mountain to a depth 
of 10 feet, and were carried as far as Jamaica, fully 

I, 000 miles off. 

152. You can understand that as the stones and dust 
and ashes are blown out of the hole they will form a 
heap round about it. This heap is called the cone, and 
the hole itself goes down like a funnel through the 
cone and is called the crater. Besides the main crater 
others break out and vomit forth stones and dust and 
cinders and lava ; and lava will burst out of the side 
of the mountain and flow like a small river of melting 
iron, though the surface soon cools and gets thick, 
and then runs very slowly and forms huge ugly lumps. 
A field of lava after the lava is cold is one of the 
most hideous sights in the world. Thus by degrees a 
mountain is formed round the crater. Etna is nearly 

II, 000 feet high, and 87 miles round the base, and 
was probably all formed in the way described. Some¬ 
times, as at Ternate and Tidore, in the Moluccas, 
which are regular symmetrical cones of from 5 to 
6,000 feet high, the volcano appears to have risen to 
its present height by the outpouring of the single 
crater. 

153. These particulars rather belong to geology than 
geography, and you will find full information upon 
them in the Primer of Physical Geography (p. 103); 
but there are some things about volcanoes which must 



94 


GEOGRAPHY. 


be noticed here. One is that they are seldom or never 
far away from water. Etna, Vesuvius, and Hecla are 
all close to the coast. The volcanoes of the Andes 
line the eastern shore of the Pacific for several 
thousand miles; and from North America through the 
Aleutian and Kurile islands, Japan, the Philippines 
and Java, to New Zealand, volcanoes may be said 
almost to enclose that ocean. 

154. Another point is that they often occur in 
straight lines, as if over a crack or weak place in the 
earth’s crust. In the Aleutian islands there are 23, 
covering 900 miles in length. In Kamschatka and the 
Kurile islands they extend 540 miles in a line, in the 
Ladrones 420, and in the Sundas for nearly 1,000. 
But as each volcanic mountain is, from the way in 
which it is formed, independent—each collected around 
its own crater or craters, and formed by the heaping 
together of the materials thrown out of the crater— 
volcanoes are, as a rule, different in shape from 
mountains of upheaval. 

155. Old lava broken up and worn down by the 
action of the weather forms a peculiarly rich soil. On 
the slopes of Vesuvius grow the grapes from which the 
famous wine called Lacrima Christi is made. Madeira 
is a mass of disintegrated volcanic rock, and the 
plain of Gennesareth, at the N.W. corner of the Lake 
of Galilee, one of the richest little spots in the world, 
derives its fertile soil from the wearing down of the 
basalt of an old volcano just above it. 

156. Valleys are the natural opposites to mountains. 
A valley is the trench or hollow through which a river 
flows—as the valley of the Thames, the valley of the 
Nile, the valley of the Rhone, the vale of Clwydd ; 
meaning the whole extent between the heights on the 



VALLEYS. PLAINS. 


95 

one side of the river and the heights on the other. 
Thus it expresses something like what is meant by 
the more exact word basin (§ 200), though the basin 
takes in all the sources and feeders of the river, up 
to the very farthest and smallest, whereas the valley 
relates to the stream alone. The valley must have 
begun in some accidental hollow in the ground, which 
attracted the water to flow along it, and which has 
been gradually deepened and widened by the flow. 
Though originally formed in this way it is not 
necessary that the river should still be there ; many 
causes may have altered its course or lessened its 
flow. Sometimes the bed of the valley will be occu¬ 
pied by a series of lakes. 

157. A plain is a district of more or less even 
ground, not broken up by mountains or hills. It may 
have undulations of its own, and may rise by degrees 
to a considerable height, but it will do so by long, 
easy slopes. Thus Salisbury Plain is a succession of 
hollows and rises, over which the road goes gently up 
and down. Some plains are alluvial—that is, have 
been deposited by water—and these are almost abso¬ 
lutely level. Such are the counties of Bedford, Cam¬ 
bridge, Norfolk, and Lincoln; and such are the 
plain of Crau, between Arles and Marseilles—which 
is the older part of the Delta of the Rhone; or the 
whole of Lower Egypt, which is the Delta of the 
Nile, or, on a larger scale, the Steppes of South 
Russia, and the plains of Western or Lower Turkestan, 
at one time the bed of an ocean of which the Caspian 
and Aral Seas are traces. 

158. When a plain is some height above the sea- 

level, it is called a plateau or table-land. 

159. The greatest plain in the world is that which 

9 




96 


GEOGRAPHY. 


has been already (§72) described as spreading over 
the northern part of Europe and Asia, from Cam¬ 
bridgeshire to the eastern end of Siberia. On the 
European side its mean height above the sea-level 
is about 500 feet, on the Asiatic side rather more. 
Each portion is distinguished for its rivers; those 
in Europe drain partly into the Baltic and partly 
into the Black Sea, and the mighty Volga itself dis¬ 
charges 1-7th of all the water of Europe into the 
Caspian. The rivers of the Siberian plain are far 
larger even than the Volga, and they all discharge 
into the Arctic Ocean ; the table-land of Central Asia 
preventing all drainage to the southward. The 
steppes of Europe are the country about the lower 
part of the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga, a level 
district about 200 feet above the sea. East of the 
Volga the land falls below the sea-level, and these 
are the lower steppes. 

160. The Altai mountains, and their continuation 
eastward, which shut in Siberia on the south, are 
the beginning of the mass of high land which ends 
in the range of the Himalayas. The country rises 
southwards by successive terraces : first the plateau 
of Mongolia and the sandy desert of Gobi, forming 
together a district of from 1,200 to 1,800 miles 
from west to east, and 600 broad from north to 
south, and from 2,500 to 3,000 feet in general 
height. Then come the Kuen-lun mountains, forming 
the buttresses to another step upwards, to the very 
lofty plateau of Tibet, 700 miles long by 350 wide, 
and 15 to 17,000 feet high. This is absolutely shut 
out from all communication with the ocean, and its 
rivers, though large, all flow into lakes, with no outlet 
but that of evaporation. South of Tibet are the 



PLATEAUS AND PLAINS. 


97 


Gangri mountains, dividing it from the valley of the 
upper Brahmapootra, over which towers the double 
range of the Himalayas, with a general height of 
18,000 feet, and peaks which reach 29,000. 

161. The Lowland plains of S. America lie between 
the Andes and the Atlantic, and form 7-8ths of the 
whole of the South continent. They are known by the 
names of the Llanos, or Savannahs, in the north, and 
the Pampas in the south. The Selvas are a forest 
district in the basin of the Amazons. These plains 
are flooded every year by the great rivers which flow 
through them. 

162. The interior of North America, between the 
Rocky mountains on the west and the Alleghanies on 
the east, is an immense plain, sloping up very gradually 
from the Gulf of Mexico to a summit of about 1,500 
feet in height. The northern slopes of this summit 
drain into the Saskatchewan and Red rivers, the 
southern into the Missouri and Mississippi; and 
north-east of it is the great chain of fresh-water lakes 
which discharge through the St. Lawrence into the 
Atlantic. The northern and eastern portions of 
the great plain, some 1,400 by 1,000 miles, are the 
prairies, undulating regions covered with coarse 
grass. 

163. The Sahara, or burning desert of North Africa, 
is 3,000 miles long from the Atlantic to Egypt, and 
over 1,000 in width, equal in area to the whole of 
Australia, and varying in height from below the sea to 
1,500 feet above it. The extreme east end of the 
Sahara is the land of Egypt, where the sand is ferti¬ 
lised by the annual inundation of the Nile. 

164. The Dasht-i-kavir of Northern Persia is a 
desert of salt swamps which appears to cover a space 




98 


GEOGRAPHY. 


of 6 degrees of longitude by 2 of latitude ; but it is 
so little known that I am only able to mention it. 

165. Peninsula, a country or piece of land not 
quite an island—not quite surrounded by the sea; 
such as the Morea or the Crimea, each of which is a 
perfect example. If South America were smaller, it 
too would be a perfect peninsula, hanging on as it 
does from North America by the little shred of 
Panama (fig. 15); and so would Africa, which is 
connected to Asia only by the narrow neck of Suez. 
Indeed, since the Suez Canal was made, Africa is 
practically an island. But these great lands are con¬ 
tinents, and it would be disrespectful to apply the 
term peninsula to either of them. 

166. Where there is a peninsula there ought to be 
an isthmus, which is the neck of land connecting ^t 
with the mainland; and the best examples of this 
are the Isthmus of Darien or Panama ; that at Perekop 
at the head of the Crimea; and the Isthmus of 
Corinth, which connects the Morea with Greece. 
This last was “the Isthmus” with the Greeks, and 
gave its name to the Isthmian games, which were 
played there. 

167. The peninsula with which we are all most 
familiar is that of Spain and Portugal, where the Penin¬ 
sular war was fought. In fact, in the mouths of many 
people, “ the Peninsula ” means these two countries. 
We also hear the expression the Peninsula of India; 
but the word is incorrect in both cases, since the 
part where Spain joins France is more than 200 miles 
wide, and the broadest part of India is where it joins 
the continent—that is, where the neck of the isthmus 
ought to be. 

168. With the Greeks a chersonesus was the same 



PENINSULA. RIVERS. 


99 


thing as a peninsula with us. They called the Morea 
the Peloponnesus (the island of Pelops), the Crimea 
the Tauric Chersonese, and the peninsula of Malacca 
the Golden Chersonese. 

169. A river is the largest kind of stream, always 
flowing, never dry. Small streams are rivulets or 
brooks. A torrent is a stream which flows only 
in the winter or rainy season, and in summer is dry 
or much reduced, leaving a wide empty bed of 
stones and sand, with a small stream in the middle. 
In Italy this is called jiuitiara , in India nullah , in 
Syria wady. In Spain, wady , an Arabic word, has 
become corrupted into guad, as in Guad-alquivir, 
Guad-arama, &c. In North America and Australia 
the word creek is used for a river of secondary size, 
whether permanent, or dry in summer. But a creek 
(that is, crack) is correctly an opening in the shore 
narrower than a gulf. (§204.) 

170. When you stand by a great, strong rush¬ 
ing river, like the Rhine at Basle or the Thames at 
Battersea Bridge, it is hard to believe that all that 
mass of water is made up of separate rills and drops, 
gathered one by one from the land the river passes 
through. And it is harder still not to imagine that if 
you wait long enough it must pass away before your 
eyes, and leave the bed dry. It seems impossible 
that so much water can go flowing on for long. But in 
both cases you are wrong. The Rhine and the Thames 
will live longer than you will, and they are made of 
contributions from innumerable sources. 

171. Rivers are the drains of a country. The 
water kills from the sky in rain or snow, and will 
naturally drain off by the lowest levels till it reaches 
the lowest of all, the sea. As it goes along, one drain 




IOO 


GEOGRAPHY. 


joins another, until at last they all get united into one 
large main drain, and this we call the river. This is 
easy to understand where the country consists of 
mountains and slopes, but the same thing happens 
where it is so flat that, to the eye, there appears no 
slope at all; the water will always find out the lowest 
level, and along that it will travel, unless it be a hole, 
and then it stays there and forms a lake. 

172. A river may have its source—that is, its longest 
branch may begin—in a spring, like the Jordan ; 
or a lake like the St. Lawrence, the Amazons, and 
probably the Nile; or a glacier like the Rhone; 
but it is not the source which makes a river large, 
it is the number of other rivers and streams which 
flow into it, and bring down the water of the 
various basins which they themselves have drained. 
A river which runs into another is called an affluent 
or tributary, and the place at which they join is the 
confluence. A river does not usually grow broader 
after it is joined by a tributary, but it runs faster, 
and therefore is able to carry along the extra load of 
earth and stones which the tributary brings into it. For 
we must remember that one great office of rivers is to 
bring down the materials of the highlands to the low¬ 
lands and into the sea, and thus continually to renew 
the face of the earth. The Nile, for instance, every 
summer spreads a layer of rich mud over the fields 
of Egypt, which is as good as a coat of manure. 

173. A river which gets much of its water from 
mountains has a small basin, is very rapid in its 
flow, subject to frequent sudden floods, deep in 
winter, shallow in summer, boats cannot make way 
against the stream, and little trade can be carried on 
upon it. Thus the Rhone, which rises in the heart of 



THE RHONE. THE MISSISSIPPI. 


IOT 


the Alps, is 504 miles long, and has six main tribu¬ 
taries, its basin is 38,000 square miles, it descends 
through 5,600 feet, it is the most rapid river in 
Europe, perhaps in the world ; the stream is so strong 
that its navigation can only be carried on by steam¬ 
boats, and even that only below Lyons. The floods 
are often terrific, and the number of people and 
buildings destroyed by them is immense. 

174. Now take a river of a different kind. The 
Mississippi has more than a hundred affluents, of which 
the Missouri is fully as big as itself, while several of 
the others are mighty streams. The land drained by 
the whole of these rivers, which at last collect in the 
one channel of the Mississippi, is more than a million 
of square miles, and chiefly flat land. The Mis¬ 
souri gets much of its water from the Rocky moun¬ 
tains, but the Mississippi itself and its other great 
tributaries drain a country which slopes so gently 
that at 2,400 miles’ distance it is not quite 1,500 
feet above the sea. But the current is very strong and 
muddy, always running down, full of sunken trees 
and very dangerous to boats, and the trees and timber 
which it brings down so fill it up as in some places to 
stop the passage almost entirely. The windings of 
the Mississippi also are so great as to make some parts 
of it double the length. The Volga, the largest river 
of Europe, 2,700 miles long, drains a surface of half a 
million miles, for the most part so flat that the highest 
land in all that space is but 1,100 feet above the 
ocean. The Volga, too, is always running one way; 
its mouth is barred by sandbanks; and after all its 
length and its many windings it ends, not in the open 
sea but in the Caspian, a lake without any outlet. 

175. By the side of these giants, the Thames is 






102 


GEOGRAPHY. 


but a little river, only 210 miles long, with a dozen 
small affluents ; and its whole basin but 6,160 square 
miles. But on the other hand, partly by nature, and 
partly by the care of man, its stream is full and even from 
end to end, with no undue or vexatious meanderings; 
free from rapids, currents, or sandbanks; its water clear 
and pure except where we have spoilt it; navigable 
over nearly the whole of its length; always friendly 
and serviceable. The frosts which in North America 
and in many of the rivers of Europe imprison the 
traffic and hold it dormant during many valuable 
months, are all but unknown to the Thames. It 
enters the ocean at a sheltered place, and above 
all it is a tidal river. This keeps its mouth free 
from bars and shoals. The current though full 
is so gentle that the tide from the sea can over¬ 
come it and force it back, and thus twice a day 
the tidal water runs up beyond London, and twice a 
day runs down again, so that ships, barges, and lighters 
can float up or down without wind or other help. 
This natural and spontaneous movement is one of the 
things that have helped to make London the great 
place for commerce that it is. Every ship or boat 
that goes from the sea to Paris, Lyons, or Cologne, 
has, on account of the downward speed of the river, 
to be dragged there against the force of a constant 
strong current, instead of being floated up or helped 
by the natural tide, as it is here. Think of that when¬ 
ever you see the Thames washing the quays of the 
Embankment, and the barges floating up or down 
with no expense but that of the steering oar. 

176. The mouth of a river is where it ends, and 
empties itself into the sea or a lake. When the river 
comes from or through a soft or sandy country it brings 



THE THAMES. DELTAS. 


103 


down mud in the water. As long as the water is running 
fast the mud is carried along; but when it meets the sea 
and comes to rest at its mouth, the mud falls down 
and forms a bed or bank between the river and the 
sea, spreading out in the form of a fan. This is the 
case where the Nile runs into the Mediterranean. 



Fig. 21. 


177. The Greeks called the place delta after the name 
of their letter a which is so called; and since then all 
river-mouths of that kind have been called deltas. 
The point of the triangle, where the river originally 
entered the sea, is called the head of the delta. If 
there is a tide at the mouth of the river it will wash 
the mud away as fast as it is thrown down, and prevent 
the delta from forming. And therefore the principal 
deltas are in seas which have no tide, as at the mouths 
of the Nile, the Po, and the Ebro in the Mediterranean, 



























104 


GEOGRAPHY. 


of the Volga in the Caspian, and of the Mississippi 
in the Gulf of Mexico. This last covers more than 
30,000 square miles—very nearly the area of Ireland— 
and has its head 200 miles up the river. Holland is a 
large delta of very ancient date formed at the mouths 
of the Rhine and the Meuse; and Holland and Lower 
Egypt are good examples of the way in which land is 
made out of the sea by the agency of a river. 

178. It follows from what we have just said that the 
mouths of tidal rivers—w T hich are called estuaries— 
are, like the Thames, as a rule free from bars or sand¬ 
banks. 

179. Where the fall of rivers is rapid, and they bring 
down many stones or much mud in their water, they 
gradually drop stones and sand as they go along, and 
so the bed is continually raising itself. You may see 
this in North Wales, where a mountain torrent will 
often run on a kind of embankment of stones and 
rocks, several feet above the fields it runs through. 
But in Italy such rivers as the Po, the Ticino, and 
the Dora Baltea have raised themselves many yards 
above the country; and in consequence, when their 
waters are swelled by the melting of the snow on the 
mountains or by much rain, and they overflow their 
banks, they rush down into the country on each side, 
and carry everything away. The quantity of sand 
and sediment brought down by some rivers is enor¬ 
mous. That of the Ganges is computed to be six 
thousand million cubic feet in the year, which, if it 
could be heaped up before us, would form a mass 
equal in size to 600 St. Paul’s Cathedrals; and this 
has been going on for thousands, perhaps millions, of 
years. Picture to yourself the way in which the earth 
must be wearing down under such influences. 




THE FALL OF ELVERS. 


i°5 


180. The rivers of Great Britain, even in the wettest 
seasons, keep to their own beds, but in India so great 
is the rush of water from the mountains in the rainy 
season, that it is no uncommon thing for a river to 
make a new bed for itself in the soft soil of the plains, 
and to wander several miles away from its old course, 
to the destruction of everything in its road. The 
Indus is an old offender in this way. 

181. The slope or fall is different in different 
rivers, and in different parts of the same. A river like 
the Rhine or the Rhone, which rises high up in the 
mountains, falls very quickly in the upper part of its 
course and more gently afterwards. As far down as 
Basle the Rhine falls through a height of 4,000 feet in 
230 miles, or 17 feet per mile. Between Basle and 
Mayence (246 miles) it falls 555 feet, or 2^ feet per 
mile. The slope of the Rhone between Geneva and 
Lyons is 6 feet 9 inches per mile, and from Lyons to 
the sea 2 feet inches per mile. The Nile, in the 
1,000 miles from Khartoum to Philce, falls through 784 
feet, or about 9 inches per mile. Here the cataracts 
cease, and for the rest of the distance to the Mediter¬ 
ranean at Damietta, 600 miles, the fall is 354 feet, or 
7 inches per mile. The Amazons, during the upper 
3,000 miles of its course, falls 10,000 feet, or 3^ feet 
per mile; during the last 400 miles it suddenly sub¬ 
sides, and slopes only 40 feet, or 1 ^ inch in a mile. 
The Thames, from Chertsey to Teddington, slopes 
1714 inches per mile, from Teddington to London 
Bridge (17 miles), 9 inches per mile, and from 
London Bridge to the Nore (46 miles), 1 inch per 
mile. 

182. The speed of a river does not usually depend 
on its slope so much as on its depth, or the body of 




io6 


GEOGRAPHY. 


water it contains, and on the straightness of its course. 
If there are many windings and the river is shallow, 
the speed is much reduced by the friction of the water 
against the sides and bottom. The average speed of 
the Nile, Rhine, and Ganges in their lower portions is 
said to be from three to four miles an hour; the 
St. Lawrence, below Niagara, about three miles an 
hour; the Thames, from Battersea downwards, at low 
tide—when the river is left to itself—from 3 to 3% 
miles per hour. We can form some idea of the vast 
body of water which is poured out by the Mississippi 
into the Mexican Gulf, when we know that notwith¬ 
standing its gentle slope and very crooked course, 
and the many hindrances of timber, &c., already men¬ 
tioned, the force of the current is enough to hurl the 
water out so violently that its mud discolours the sea 
out of sight of land. 

183. A river is rarely the boundary between two 
nations. The large rivers we have spoken of run 
through their own countries. The French wished to 
make the Rhine the boundary between a part of 
France and Germany, but the Vosges mountains are 
the actual barrier. In fact a river is rather a ready 
means of communication than a barrier. 

184. You will often see the expression “right bank” 
or “ left bank ” of a river. You are supposed to be at 
the source, looking down the stream. Then the right 
bank is to your right hand, and the left bank to your 
left hand. 

185. The names of rivers are so curious that it will 
be well worth our while to bestow a few minutes upon 
them. They are amongst the oldest names in the 
world; they pass through the oddest changes as the 



NAMES OF RIVERS. 


107 


language of the country alters, but the old word re¬ 
mains firm and fast at the bottom of the new form. 

They are the memorials of the very earliest races, 
surviving amidst the latest civilisation. As the old 
British stones at Avebury linger among the cottages 
of the modern village, so does the Celtic word for 
water still sound in the name of Ox ford. After the 
North American Indians are extinct their language 
will survive for ever in the names of the Potomac 
and the Susquehanna. 

The principal river names in England are four. 
They are Celtic words, of the language spoken in the 
island before Romans or Englishmen came into it, 
and still spoken in Wales and the Highlands; and 
they mean simply “ river ” or “ water.” 

186. Avon .—There are no less than fourteen rivers 
with this name unchanged in Great Britain, and still 
more have it in a modified form, as Evan, Inn, &c. 
Afon is the Welsh word for river, and the Welsh speak 
habitually of the “Afon so-and-so,” as we do of the 
“ River so-and-so.” 

187. Door (pronounced like poor).—There are three 
rivers called exactly by this name, and many others 
called Dore, Duir, Dover, Dura-water, Thur, Adur, 
and other forms. Joined with the word gwyn , clear, 
dur-oyuyn, the clear water, it appears as Derwent, of 
which name there are four rivers in the north of 
England, besides the Darwen and Derwen, and the 
Lake of Derwent water. It is easier to say Darent 
than Derwent, and so Darent it has become in Kent, 
and from Darent, Dart, or shortened in another way, 
Trent. Trent used to be supposed to mean thirty, 
from the Latin triginta , French trente\ and they said it 

10 



io8 


GEOGRAPHY. 


was because the river had thirty * tributaries, thirty 
monasteries on its banks, thirty kinds of fish; but it 
is nothing of the sort. So too Dart is often said to 
mean that the stream is as swift as a dart; but after 
what I have said you will know better. 

188. Uisge. —This means simply “water,” and is pre¬ 
served almost exactly in “whisky,” which was called 
at first the “water of life,” like the French name 
eau-de-vie for brandy. And this is the most curious 
of all the river names for its changes. The nearest 
to the old form are perhaps the Wisk in Yorkshire 
and the Usk in Monmouthshire; then comes Esk, 
of which there are nine, then Exe, Ax, Ux, and 
Ox—which has nothing to do with oxen, as the 
heralds supposed who gave Oxford its coat-of-arms— 
and Ose, at Oseney, the “ island in the water ” near 
Oxford; and then Use, Ouse, Ousel, Ouseburn, Ash, 
and Wish or Wis—in Wisbeach—and the Wash. The 
Isis is the same word, and the Tam-esis or Thames is 
only the “ broad water,” because in old days it ex¬ 
tended from where London stands to the Sydenham 
hills. On the whole there are not less than 50 streams 
named from Uisge, besides a large number of places 
and things. Phoenix Park, Dublin, strange as it seems, 
is a mere English corruption of Fion-uisge, from a clear 
spring there. 

189. The fourth word is Don , which besides its own 
form appears as Dun, Dean, Dane, Davon, Devon, 
Tyne, Teign, Teyn, and so on. 

These names are not confined to England. And 
we need only remember the Dordogne, the Adour, 

* So Milton : 

Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads 
•His thirty arms along the indented meads. 






NAMES OF RIVERS. LAKES. 


109 


the Douro; the Oxus, the Oise, the Iser, Osnaburg 
(which is really Osnabruck); the Don and the Danube, 
to see how widely spread they are. 

190. A river is a drain for taking the water of a 
country to the ocean, and a lake is a natural tank 
for storing it up. Suppose a hollow place between two 
mountains, or two parts of a mountain. Streams flow 
down the slopes into it, and springs burst up in its 
bed, and the water collects in the hollow and rises 
till it finds a place where it can run away; and that is 
sometimes the source of a great river. Such is Der¬ 
went Water, or Loch Tay, or the lake of Zurich, or 
the Italian lakes, or the lake Sir-i-kol (now called 
Victoria) 15,600 feet high, and the source of the Oxus, 

In his high mountain cradle in Pamere. 

Sometimes a river will flow in at one end and out at 
the other, as the Rhone runs through the lake of 
Geneva, and the Rhine through the lake of Constance, 
or the Jordan through the lake of Galilee. Sometimes 
a number of lakes will be connected together, as those 
of North America. (§79.) 

191. Lakes are mostly in mountainous countries, 
such as Scotland, Cumberland, Switzerland, or Bavaria, 
where there are often convenient hollows for them to 
form in. Not so however the North American lakes 
which abound in Western Canada and Rupert’s Land, 
and have flat shores, and seem to come from the extra¬ 
ordinary wetness of the country; nor the Sea of Aral; 
nor the great lakes of North Russia, Finland, and 
South Sweden, which are probably the remains of the 
water that once covered the whole of that low region, 
as Whittleseymere, in the Fen country in Huntingdon, 
is or was. 



IIO 


GEOGRAPHY. 


192. It is a great advantage to a river to run through 
a lake, because the lake regulates the flow of the water 
which goes away from it, and keeps it steady. If 
much rain falls in the mountains above, or the weather 
becomes hot and the snow melts quickly, it will come 
down into the upper part of the river in such sudden 
floods that the channel is not big enough to carry it 
off, and then it will overflow and wash away houses 
and fields and cattle, or, like the Indian rivers (§180), 
it will change its bed. But if there is a lake this is 
prevented, because the flood of water which was 
enough to fill the river to overflowing is only sufficient 
to make the lake rise a few inches or a few feet, and 
then the water gets time to flow away more quietly 
down the lower part of the river. 

193. Lakes through which water flows are fresh. 
But sometimes the hollow in which the water collects 
is lower than the ocean, or so parted from it that there 
can be no outlet; in this case, the only escape for the 
water is by evaporation. The streams and the springs 
pour in to the lake, the sun heats the water and turns 
it into vapour, and the level at which the water 
stands is the balance of the two. This is the case in 
the Dead Sea. The water is continually being dis¬ 
tilled by the sun, that is to say the pure water is 
driven off in vapour, and the salts and other in¬ 
gredients remain behind in the lake. It is easy to 
see that the quantity of salts in the water must be 
continually increasing, while the quantity of water 
remains the same; so that the saltness must go on 
becoming more and more intense, till, as in the Dead 
Sea, the water is too bitter and hot to be borne in the 
mouth, or, as in lake Assal, in Eastern Africa, it is 
almost solid salt. 



LAKES . INLAND SEAS. 


hi 


194. The Caspian and Aral are the largest of a great 
number of lakes, which receive the drainage of the 
central district of Asia—the so-called “ continental 
district ” already mentioned. Similar inland lakes are 
those of Titicaca in Bolivia, in the bosom of the 
Andes; lake Chad in the Sahara; and the Great 
Salt Lake in Utah, North America. 

195. Lakes in Scotland are called loch, and in 
Ireland lough —both pronounced alike. A tarn is 
a small lake, usually high up in the mountains. 

196. Inland seas are portions of the ocean, 
separated from it by a very narrow entrance. Such 
are the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and Hudson’s Bay; 
but the most important are the Baltic and the Medi¬ 
terranean (which means “ in the midst of land ”), in¬ 
cluding the Black Sea. These two receive between 
them more than half the waters of Europe. They 
have little or no tide, as their narrow entrances keep 
it out. They are, however, in some respects very 
different. The Baltic is shallow, the Mediterranean 
deep; the Baltic is diluted by its many rivers, and 
its water is not so salt as the ocean; while the 
Mediterranean, not receiving nearly so many rivers in 
proportion, and having a hot climate to evaporate 
the water, is salter than the ocean. The Mediterranean 
is agreeable, the Baltic inclement, both are treacherous. 
In each there is a constant current both out and 
in, but in the Mediterranean the outward current is 
below, and the inward one above; while in the Baltic 
it is exactly the reverse—the outgoing current is 
above, and the incoming one below. These two seas 
add enormously to the coast-line of Europe, and help 
to give it that great length which is one of the causes 
of its superiority to other parts of the world. 



112 


GEOGRAPHY. 


197. Watershed and waterparting are two 

words belonging to the supply of water to rivers. 
A waterparting is the spot or line at which the 
surface-water of a mountain, hill, or swelling ground 
parts, and begins to flow down the slope on each side. 
The ridge of a roof is a waterparting. It is the 
line between the rain which runs down the slates on 



Fig. 22. 


one side and the slates on the other. If the roof were 
nearly flat, like the top of a railway-carriage, the water 



would still fall off on each side, and there would still 
be a line along the middle at which the parting took 
place. Some mountains have a ridge almost as sharp 
as that of the roof, others are more irregular. Some 
























WA TER PAR TING. 


”3 


undulating ground is as flat as the top of the rail¬ 
way-carriage; and it is difficult to say by the eye 
where the line of waterparting is ; and some ground 
is flat here, and round a little farther on, and 
broken here, and steep there; and then it is more 
difficult still. But water will always find its level, 
and there is always a line at which the water will 
know of itself where to go down the one side and 
where to go down the other ; and that line, straight 
or crooked, is the waterparting. You may trace it 
on a good map, even to a small scale and in very flat 
countries, by noticing where the rivers start from. 
Here is a bit from the centre of Russia where the 
undulations of the ground are very slight : 



The dotted line drawn midway between the various 
sources of the streams which flow different ways can¬ 
not be far from the waterparting of this flat district. 

198. It is interesting, in going through a moun¬ 
tainous country, to see the parting of the streams. 
There is a good example on the Highland Railway 
a couple of miles north of Dalnaspidal, where the 








GEOGRAPHY. 


114 

streams of the Garry and the Truim—one of the 
tributaries of the Spey—may be seen to part and fall 
off, one down the one slope of the hill, the other 
down the other, as the train passes the waterparting. 
Sometimes the lme will be very crooked, and the 
heads of the streams on each side will run back far 
past each other, and “ overlap,” as it is called. In 
the highlands of Central Palestine the streams flow 
down to the Mediterranean on one side, and the 
Jordan valley on the other; and there the heads of 
an eastern torrent will sometimes be 4 miles farther 
west than that of the western torrent next to it. 
In the central part of North America, at the water- 
parting of the Mississippi on the south and the 
Saskatchewan on the north, the sources of the rivers 
are sometimes so close, and the land between them 
so level, that boats can be carried over from one to 
the other; and in the rainy season, when the whole 
district is inundated, boats can even be rowed across. 

199. The waterparting being the ridge or highest 
line between two streams, the watershed is the 
whole of the ground between the waterparting and the 



Fig. 25. 


stream. In fact, it is the slope of the roof. The ridge 


















IVA TERSHED. BASIN. 


n 5 

(fig. 25) is the waterparting ; the slates on each 
side are the watershed ; and the gutter (or furrow, 
or valley, for the builders call it by all three names) 
is the river. “ Ridge and furrow ” is the common 
builders’ term for such a roof. The terms are actually 
borrowed from the land. Of course so simple a case 
as this will seldom or never occur in nature ; the 
broad slope of the watershed will in the course of 
ages have become indented with smaller streams, each 
of which will have its own waterparting and watershed; 
but on the whole they will all slope down towards the 
main stream—the gutter—at the bottom; and carrying 
the principle in your head, you will have no difficulty 
in tracing the whole structure. 

200. The basin is the whole area or space of ground 
which supplies the water to a river, lake, or ocean. 
In the first case it comprises not only the valley of 
the main river itself, but those of all the rivers and 
streams which run into it, with all their tributaries, up 
to the waterparting of each. The basin of the Thames 
includes the valleys of the Rennet, Wey, Mole, 
Darent, Medway, Cherwell, Thame, Colne, Lea, and 
other smaller streams, besides its own, and these 
cover in all 6,160 square miles. The basin of the 
Volga, the largest river of Europe, covers 520,000 
square miles; that of the Rhone 38,000. The flatter 
the country the larger the basin. 

201. The basin of a lake or ocean includes the 
basins of all the rivers which supply it, with all 
their tributaries. Take the Dead Sea as an example 
of a lake. Its basin includes on the north all the 
land drained by the Jordan, with all its streams and 
torrents east and west; the streams and torrents 
which fall direct into the lake itself, from Judcea 




ii6 


GEOGRAPHY. 


on the one side and Moab on the other; and on the 
south the great Wady el-Jeib, which drains the whole 
northern portion of the Arabah, including the western 
flanks of Mount Seir. Thus the basin of this not 
very extensive lake stretches from about 40 miles above 
Akabah on the south to beyond Rasheiyah and Mount 
Hermon on the north (240 miles), and from Nablus 
on the west to Sulkhad on the east (90 miles). 

202. The basin of the Mediterranean includes the 
basins of all the rivers which drain into it in Europe, 
Asia, and Africa; while the basin of the Atlantic com¬ 
prises the larger part of the continents of North and 
South America, the whole of Europe except that which 
drains into the Caspian, and a great portion of Africa. 
The basin of the Atlantic is calculated to cover on 
the whole the enormous area of 19 million square 
miles. (§95-) 

203. Coast —that is, a rib or side—the edge of 
the land near the sea. We say a sandy coast, a rocky 
coast, an iron-bound coast. Coasting vessels are 
vessels which keep near the land, and a coasting trade 
is the traffic carried on in such vessels between two 
ports of the same country, as the coal trade between 
Newcastle and London. The two sides of India bear 
this name; on the Bombay side the Malabar coast, and 
on the Madras side the Coromandel coast. Costa Rica 
is the “ rich coast.” The word was formerly used for 
an inland boundary between two countries or districts. 
In this sense it is often employed in the topographical 
portions of the Bible (Josh. xiii. 16, 25 ; xv. 1, &c.). 

204. Gulf and bay. —Each a recess in the coast; 
gulf usually perhaps the narrower and deeper, and bay 
the broader and more open, of the two, as the Persian 
Gulf and the Bay of Biscay. But the Gulf of Lions 



COAST. GULF. STRAIT. 


117 

(which has nothing to do with Lyons, though often 
so spelt) and the Gulf of Genoa are wide and open, 
while the Bay of Fundy and Chesapeake Bay are long 
and comparatively narrow inlets ; and Hudson’s Bay 
is an inland sea. The Gulf of Mexico is a vast lake 
with two narrow openings, through which the Gulf 
Stream flows, like the Rhine through the lake of Con¬ 
stance. The Bay of Salamis is practically a lake. In 
fact the words are used without any exactness. 

Firths, friths, or fiords, are inlets or arms run¬ 
ning up from the sea into the land. In the south of 
Scotland and north of Ireland these are sometimes 
called lochs or loughs, as at Loch Long, Loch 
Fyne; Lough Foyle, Belfast Lough, &c. 

A bight (from a sailor’s word, meaning the belly 
of a hanging rope) is a broad open bay; as the Bights 
of Biafra and Benin, and the Australian Bight—which 
are all of this form, and each several hundred miles 
long. 

205. Strait —that is, the old English for “narrow” 
—a sea passage between two continents or islands. 
The best known are the Strait of Gibraltar, between 
Europe and Africa; Behring’s Strait, between Eastern 
Asia and Russian America—the outlet of the Polar 
Sea into the Pacific ; Davis’s Strait, the entry from 
the Atlantic to Baffin’s Bay, and the north-west 
passage; Torres Strait, between North Australia and 
New Guinea; the Strait of Magellan, between the 
islands of Tierra del Fuego and the mainland of 
South America, the most intricate and difficult of all; 
or, to come nearer home, the Menai Strait, between 
Carnarvonshire and Anglesey. The term Strait of 
Dover has now almost given way to that of The 
Channel —la Manche , or “the sleeve,” as the French 



118 


GEOGRAPHY. 


call it. These examples shew that the word is used 
both for wide and narrow passages. The Dardanelles 
and Bosporus, the inlets to the Sea of Marmora, each 
excellent instances of a strait in its strictest sense, 
are seldom called by that name. 

206. The word # sound is used for the narrow 
passage between Zealand and Sweden, and some 
other straits *in that neighbourhood and the coast of 
Norway; and is frequent amongst the islands on 
the west coast of Scotland, which the Norse sailors 
greatly frequented in early times, and always for a long 
narrow passage. It has even travelled as far as Nan¬ 
tucket and Long island in North America. It is also 
applied to Plymouth harbour, which is rather to be 
called a bay. 

207. Another Norse word is belt, applied to 
passages, broader than a sound, between the main¬ 
land and islands of Denmark. Possibly the origin 
of the name Baltic. Gut is also sometimes used. 
“ The Gut ” is at Gibraltar, and Canso Gut separates 
Nova Scotia from Breton. It is probably the same 
word with the last syllable of Katte^w/, the broad 
strait between Denmark and Sweden—a gate or 
passage. A name of similar meaning is the fminch, 
which is used for the passage between the Hebrides 
and Scotland. Kyles is a Celtic word, frequent on 
the west and north of Scotland for a long narrow 
passage or inlet. 

208. A road or roadstead is an anchorage, a 
part of the sea sufficiently shallow for ships to ride 
at anchor. Yarmouth Roads are a good example. 


* Saxon, from the same root as “swim,”—a place which may be swum, or 
in which ships can swim. 

t Minch; Gaelic, mionnch, entrails. La Manche is perhaps the same word. 






ROADS. LAGOON'S. ICEBERGS. 


ug 


The Downs, off the coast of Kent, one of the most 
important roads in our seas—though not so called— 
take their name from the Dunes or sandhills of the 
Calais coast opposite, or perhaps of the Goodwin 
sands. 

209. Lagoons are shallow pieces of water cut off 
from the sea or a river by the formation of a bank be¬ 
tween the two, though still connected by one or more 
inlets. Such are the lagoons on the islands of which 
Venice is built. Such, though not so called, are the 
Frische Haff and Kurische Haff, in the Gulf of 
Dantzic in the Baltic. The name is also given to the 
basins of still water inside the atolls or round coral 
islands of the Pacific (§129). A view of them is given 
in the Printer of Physical Geography, p. 101. 

The shallow basin at the south end of the Dead 
Sea is known as the lagoon. 

210. Icebergs are masses of fresh-water ice, 
broken off from the points of glaciers, and set floating 
in the sea. The glaciers of the Arctic regions are 
formed in the valleys and creeks of Greenland, and 
are of immense width, and often many hundred feet 
in thickness. These push slowly down until they 
reach the sea, and project into it, sometimes as much 
as three miles. By the gradual working of the 
waves and the tide up and down, large pieces are 
broken off, and being lighter than water, float 
away. The icebergs in the Antarctic Ocean are built 
up in thin horizontal strata, of about a foot thick 
at the top of the berg, compressed to 2 or 3 inches 
at the water-line. Whether they are formed by glaciers, 
as in the Arctic Seas, is not yet ascertained. There is 
always eight times as much, in weight, of the iceberg 
below the water as above it, and when we are told 

J1 



120 


GEOGRAPHY. 


of one that floated 200 feet high and 3 miles long, 



Fig. 26. 


we may judge how enormous the whole mass was, 
for there may have been as much as 1,600 feet of 
ice under water. Another is said to have been 
seen 7 miles long and 4 wide—large enough to have 
blotted out London. They are not often so large, 
but an average size is a mile long, half a mile wide, 
and 200 feet out of the water; and they come in 
such numbers that it was said of one ship that “ she 
could no more go among them than she could sail 
through the city of London if it were half sunk in the 
sea, with all the houses tumbling about and butting 
each other.” By the Challenger (in S. lat. 63°-65°) 
they were seen in seventies and eighties at once. 
When an iceberg has been so much melted below the 
water as to destroy its balance, it will turn over and 
settle in a new position. 

211. Icebergs have great quantities of large rocks 
frozen into them, which, as the ice gradually melts, 
drop down to - the bottom of the sea. They have 























































ICEBERGS. 


121 


been seen to carry blocks estimated at ioo tons 
weight. In this way many of the large round rocks, 
called boulders, which are found in England and 
Scotland, of different stone from any in that neigh¬ 
bourhood, have been dropped when the country was 
under water and the climate arctic. 

212. In the Northern Hemisphere, the icebergs which 
come south, keep near the coasts of Greenland and 
Newfoundland, and though they come as far down as 
N. lat. 40°, yet they are seldom or never seen so far 
south in the open sea. The most southerly place in 
Europe at which a glacier comes down to the sea is on 
the coast of Norway, in N. lat. 67°. But in the Southern 
Hemisphere, so much greater is the coldness, that on 
the southern coast of Chili glaciers come down to the 
sea in lat. 46° 40', or 20° 20' nearer the Equator than 
with us, and the icebergs from the mass of land or of 
ice round the South Pole, advance across the ocean as 
far as 45 0 and even 40° S. lat., and make navigation 
impossible south of that line. At Kerguelen and 
Heard islands, south-east of Africa, in the correspond¬ 
ing latitude to Cornwall and Paris, not only do the 
glaciers come down to the water, but the islands have 
no vegetation higher than the Kerguelen cabbage, no 
inhabitants, and no animals but birds and seals. 

213. Quite distinct from icebergs is the coast-ice, 
or floe-ice. This is frozen salt water, seldom more 
than 20 feet thick, and at that thickness would 
float at between 2 and 3 feet out of the water. It is 
of a dull colour, while the ice of the bergs is a 
beautiful blue. True, in the Arctic Expedition of 1S75 
the “ ancient ice ” of the Polar Sea was much thicker 
than that just named ; but this seems to have arisen 
from the heaping up of fragments, when the ice is 




122 


GEOGRAPHY. 


broken up by the waves, and masses are forced one on 
to the top of another. 

And now I have done: not becinse I have said all 
there is to say, but because I have come to the end of 
my pages. I have tried to tell you three things : 

1. How maps are made, and how they are to De 

understood. 

2. How the land and water are placed on the 

world, and how the different countries are like 

and unlike each other. 

3. How the separate parts or features of the land 

and water are made up. 

But before we part you must let me give you a 
few words of advice. Don’t be content with know¬ 
ing your map, or your globe, or your geography 
book. The object of them all is to teach you about 
the earth, and they are no use if they don’t do 
that. Get into the habit of looking at the country 
itself, of questioning its different parts, the moun¬ 
tains, valleys, rivers, roads, and finding out their con¬ 
nection with one another, and what they all mean 
in relation to ourselves. And this you will do by 
beginning at home. The most important spot for us 
all, in this and many other respects, is our own home. 
Not only Europe, not only Great Britain, not only 
England, but our part of England. Now I ask you. 
When you go out into the garden or street do you 
know where the North and South are ? Roughly 
speaking, the South is where the sun stands at noon. 
Look up at that, and then the North is behind you, 
the West on your right, and the East on your left. 
And now go a step farther. What is there to the 




./ABIT OF OBSERVING. 


123 


South or West ? As you stand outside the house and 
look South what are you looking towards ? What is the 
first place you would come to if you walked or rode that 
way ? the first large town ? the first village ? What 
rivers, or streams, or railways, would you come to ? 
What sort of country is it ? wooded or bare ? grass 
or corn ? hilly or flat ? rounded or roughly broken ? 
I doubt if you could answer these questions. But 
I would have you try, because these things are the 
foundation of geography, and the habit of questioning 
and finding out is the foundation of all knowledge. 
The very wind as it blows in your face prompts 
you to question it. What frosty regions has the 
North-east wind travelled over, to give it its icy keen¬ 
ness? Whence comes the South-west wind with its 
moist softness ? 

It is that sort of inquiry, begun at your own centre, 
and gradually widening to other countries and scenes, 
till you know all about them, which is the useful part 
of that great science of man and nature, of which 
geography is an important portion. Moreover, 
geography invites you to this, for it touches on 
almost everything high and low. Every rill that 
you see running down a lane into the road after the 
rain, will tell you something of the nature of the 
Ganges, if you look at it properly; and on the other 
hand, there is no subject of inquiry, natural sciences, 
commerce, history, religion, which is not more or less 
connected with the form and arrangement of earth 
and ocean, with mountains, rivers, coasts, or climate, 
and which they have not at some time or other mate¬ 
rially influenced. We have noticed a few instances 
in the foregoing pages. Keep your eyes open, and 
you will see others every day of your life. 




APPENDIX. 


I. Measures of Length. 


1. The knot (geographical or nautical mile, one miuv.te, or one 
2i,6oothpart of the earth’s circumference at the Equator) con¬ 
tains 2,028 yards, or 6,084 feet. 

2. The English or statute mile contains 1,760 yards, or 5,280 feet. 

3. The French kilometre contains 1093 ‘833 yards, or 3281 ft. ioin. 

4. Depths at sea are measured by fathoms, each containing 6 ft. 

5. Comparative table of knots and statute miles :— 


Knots. 

1 

Statute Miles. 

Statute 

Miles. 

Knots. 

I 

I-I52 

I 

•868 

2 

2-304 

2 

i *736 

3 

3*457 

'y 

j 

2-603 

4 

4-609 

4 

3*471 

5 

5 * 76 i 

5 

4*339 

6 

6-914 

6 

5*207 

7 

8-o66 

7 

6-075 

8 

9-218 

8 

6-943 

9 

10-370 

9 

7-811 

10 

11 * 5 2 3 

10 

8-678 

20 

23*045 

20 

17*357 

30 

34*568 

30 

26-035 

40 

46*091 

40 

34 * 7 i 4 

50 

57 * 6 i 3 

50 

43*392 

60 

69-136 

60 

52*071 

70 

80-659 

70 

60-749 

80 

92-181 

80 

69-428 

90 

103-704 

90 

78-106 

100 

115-227 

100 

86785 















APPENDIX. 


I2 5 


II. 

Table of the Number of Knots contained in a Degree 
of Longitude under each Parallel of Latitude. 


Parallel 

of 

Latitude. 

Length of 
Degree 
in Knots. 

Parallel 

of 

Latitude. 

Length 

of 

Degree. 

Parallel 

of 

Latitude. 

Length 

of 

Degree. 

Equator 

60 "000 

30 ° 

52-004 

6o° 

30-074 

i° 

59 ‘ 99 i 

31 

51*475 

6l 

29-161 

2 

59*964 

32 

50-930 

62 

28 -240 

• 3 

59*918 

33 

50370 

63 

27*310 

4 

59*854 

34 

49*793 

64 

26*372 

5 

59*773 

35 

49 ‘202 

65 

25-426 

6 

59*673 

36 

48-596 

66 

24-471 

7 

59*556 

37 

47*975 

67 

23'509 

8 

59*419 

38 

47*339 

68 

22-540 

9 

59*266 

39 

46-688 

69 

21-564 

lO 

59*094 

40 

46 -021 

70 

20-581 

ii 

58*905 

41 

45*346 

7 i 

I 9-592 

12 

58-697 

42 

44*654 

72 

18-596 

i 3 

58-472 

43 

43*948 

73 

17*595 

14 

58-229 

44 

43*229 

74 

16-588 

15 

57-968 

45 

42 495 

75 

15*577 

16 

57690 

46 

41750 

76 

14-560 

17 

57*394 

47 

40-992 

77 

13*539 

18 

57*°8i 

48 

40*220 

78 

12-514 

19 

56751 

49 

39*437 

79 

11 '485 

20 

56-403 

50 

38-642 

80 

10*452 

21 

56-038 

5 i 

37*834 

81 

9-416 

22 

55*657 

52 

37*oi5 

82 

8*377 

2 3 

55*258 

53 

36-185 

83 

7*366 

24 

54*842 

54 

35*343 

84 

6*292 

25 

54 * 4 io 

55 

34 * 4 oo 

85 

5-246 

26 

53*962 

56 

33-627 

86 

4199 

27 

53*496 

57 

32*754 

87 

3*15° 

28 

53 *oi 5 t 

58 

31-870 

88 

2 "IOI , 

29 

52-518 

59 

30-977 

89 

1-050 

30 

52-004 

60 

30-074 

Pole 

0000 



































126 


GEOGRAPHY. 


III. 

Table of Scales employed in Ordnance Maps (See §36). 


Natural 

Scale. 

Inches to One 
Statute Mile. 

Class of Map. 


I2672O 

Plans of towns. 

1 

TTT 

120* 

Ditto. 

TW 

63'36 

Ditto. 

txtVc 

60 * 

Ditto. 

ttVtt 

36' 

Special maps. 

1 

itsth 

26‘6 

Ditto. 


25*344 

Parish plans. Cadastral survey. 


24 * 

Special maps. 


12* 

Ditto. 

TOTHf'S' 

6- 

County maps. Reconnaissances. 

t -sirr 

5* 

Indexes. 

ISlTiJ 

4* 

Special maps. 

TTl'TT 

3* 

Indexes. Reconnaissances of roads. 

TnTTTO’ 

2* 

Special maps. 

1 

I * 

General map of the United Kingdom. 

TT3 4 TXT 

*25 

Special maps (4 miles to an inch). 


*2 

Ditto (5 miles to an inch). 

FrsVtnr 

'I 

Index map (10 miles to an inch). 

lFinmnr 

•03 

Special maps (30 miles to an inch). 


In the Ordnance Maps:— 

Turnpike or Main Roads, if fenced, are represented by two parallel lines, a 
thin and a thick, the thick one being the lower, or right-hand one, ac¬ 
cording to position. Cross Roads are narrower, and have both sides 
alike, two thin lines. Footpaths are shown by a single dotted line, and 
the sides of all roads, where they are not fenced, by dotted lines. 

Rivers by two lines not strictly parallel, the upper one, or the left-hand one 
being thick; and the two open lines joining at last in one black line. 

Ferries by a single dotted line. Fords by two dotted lines. 

Railroads by thick parallel lines, connected by thin cross lines. 

Canals by two lines, a thick and a thin, exactly parallel, the thick line being 
the upper one, or the left-hand one, according to position. Also by the 
locks and bridges. 

Bridges. —A moderate-sized bridge is represented by two parallel lines with 
their ends bent outwards; smaller bridges by two small curves drawn 
back to back; the letters S, W, or I are added to show whether the 
bridges are of stone, wood, or iron. 

Churches are marked with a cross. 

Telegraph lines by short, thin, vertical strokes to represent the posts. 














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NOW BEADY: 

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By THOMAS PRENDERGAST, 

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This method offers a solution of the problem, How to obtain facility 
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linguists. 


Already published. 

HAND-BOOK OF THE MASTERY SERIES; being an Introduc¬ 
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losie ait produit pour Teuseignement des langues etrangeres.”— 
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Works of Richard Anthony Proctor. 


OTHER WORLDS THAN OURS: The Plurality of Worlds, 
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LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE nOURS. A Series of 
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THE MOON: her Motions, Aspect, Scenery, and Physical Con¬ 
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THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN. A Series of Essays on the 
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OUR PLACE AMONG INFINITIES. A Series of Essays 
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EIGHTEEN 


CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. 

By the Rev. JAMES WHITE, 

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1 vol., 12mo.Cloth, $2.00. 


CONTENTS. 

I. Century.—The Bad Emperors.—IT. The Good Emperors.—III. 
Anarchy and Confusion.—Growth of the Christian Church.—IV. The 
Removal to Constantinople.—Establishment of Christianity.—Apos¬ 
tasy of Julian.—Settlement of the Goths.—Y. End of the Roman 
Empire.—Formation of Modern States.—Growth of Ecclesiastical 
Authority.—VI. Belisarius and Narses in Italy.—Settlement of the 
Lombards.—Laws of Justinian.—Birth of Mohammed.—VII. Power 
of Rome supported by the Monks.—Conquests of the Mohammedans. 
—VIII. Temporal Power of the Popes.—The Empire of Charlemagne* 
—IX. Dismemberment of Charlemagne’s Empire.—Danish Invasion 
of England.—Weakness of France.—Reign of Alfred.—X. Darkness 
and Despair.—XI. The Commencement of Improvement.—Gregory 
VII.—First Crusade.—XII. Elevation of Learning.—Power of the 
Church.—Thomas a Becket.—XIII. First Crusade against Heretics.— 
The Albigenses.—Magna Charta.—Edward I.—XIV. Abolition of the 
Order of Templars.—Rise of Modern Literature.—Schism of the 
Church.—XV. Decline of Feudalism.—Agincourt.—Joan of Arc.— 
The Printing-Press.—Discovery of America.—XVI. The Reformation. 
—The Jesuits.—Policy of Elizabeth.—XVII. English Rebellion and 
Revolution.—Despotism of Louis XIV.—XVIII. India.—America.— 
France.—Index. 


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The Life of Daniel Webster, 

By GEORGE TICEXOU CURTIS. 


Illustrated with Elegant Steel Portraits, and Fine Woodcuts 
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A STANDARD BOOK OF REFERENCE\ 


THE 

Household Book of Poetry. 

Edited by CHARLES A. DANA. 


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1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. 396 pages. Price, $1.50. 


SCENERY OF THE PACIFIC RAILWAYS, AND 

COLORADO. 

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NICHOLSON’S GEOLOGY. 

Text-Book of Geology, for Schools and Colleges. 

By H. Alleyne Nicholson, M. D., D. Sc., M. A., Ph. D., 
F. R. S. E., F. G. S., etc., Professor of Natural History 
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12 mo. 266 pages. Price, $1.30. 

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NICHOLSON’S ZOOLOGY. 

Text-Book of Zoology, for Schools and Colleges. 

BY SAME AUTHOR AS ABOVE. 

12 mo. 353 pages. Price , $1.50. 

In this volume much more space has been devoted, comparatively speaking, 
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with the larger and less attainable Vertebrate Animals. 

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CORNELL’S PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 

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Prof. Huxley ranks among the first of living physiologists, and his opinions 
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through the incompetence of compilers. 

The general subject of Hygiene, prepared by Dr. Youmans. is treated in a 
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BRA 


Y O 


F CON 


RIM E 0 041 350 307 



Science Primers , 

CHEMISTRY! Prof. Roscoe* 

PHYSICS ; Balfour Stewart* 

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY! A Gknas. 

GEO LOG Y v A. Geikie* 

PHYSIOLOGY; M, Foster. 

.ASTRONOMY; J. N. Lockyer, 

BOTANY; J. D. Hooker. 

LOGIC; W. S. Jevons. 

INYENTIONAL GEOMETRY; Spencer, 
PIANOFORTE; Franklin Taylor. 

Literature Primers. 

ENGLISH GRAMMAR: R. Morris. 

“ LITERATURE: Stopford Brooke. 
PHILOLOGY: J. Pole, 

CLASSICAL GEOGRAPHY: H. F, Tozek. 
SHAKESPEARE: Ed, DowDEtr, 

STUDIES IN BRYANT: Joseph Alden. 

History Primers. 

GREECEs C A Fyffe. 

ROME; M« Creighton, 

EUROPE; E. A, Freeman, 

OLD GREEK LIFE; J, P, Mahaffy, 

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES: A. S. WttKlNS, 
GEOGRAPHY; George Grove, 

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